The John Milton Series Boxset 2

by Mark Dawson

  Dubois took a step up, closer to him. Milton intercepted him smoothly, reaching out to take his wrist. He rested his thumb where his watch would have been and his fingers in the groove where the blood vessels passed by the underside of the wrist and squeezed, compressing the arteries. The jolt of pain flashed across Dubois’s face, and Milton used the moment to place his left hand on his sternum and push him back against the wall, out of the way. It was discreet and swift.

  “Don’t do anything silly,” Milton said to him. His voice was even and calm, but laced with threat.

  “You’re crazy,” Dubois growled.

  Milton squeezed the pressure point again. “I know I am. But I’m not the one who’s going to wake up in Angola tomorrow.”

  Milton released his grip. Dubois instinctively massaged the wrist before he realised that he was admitting weakness. He stopped, let his arm fall loose, and glared at Milton.

  “Ziggy,” Milton said. “Where did you park?”

  “Two blocks north.”

  “Give him your keys.”

  He looked at him askance.

  “Don’t worry.”

  Ziggy did as he was asked, handing them to Dubois.

  “Like I say, he’s in the trunk. Probably quite vexed about that. Let him out. You’ll save time for everyone if you both go straight to the police.”

  “You think this is over?”

  “I’m pretty sure it is.”

  “It’s not.”

  Dubois turned and walked down the corridor and away.

  “What are you doing?” Ziggy asked.

  “Let them go. They won’t be hard to find. Men like that don’t disappear.”

  Izzy looked back at Milton. Her face was lined with concentration, focussed on the things she knew that she would have to say as the hearing began, but, for a moment, a smile broke through. She had dynamite now. Ziggy had provided it for her. When she was done, the city’s case would have been blown into tiny fragments and cast to the wind.

  “You ready?” Milton asked her.

  “You gonna come watch? It’s gonna be fun.”

  Milton said that he would.

  She turned back, striding on with purpose, her heels ringing against the tile, and Milton followed behind her.

  Part Five

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  MILTON, IZZY AND ZIGGY walked up to the parade route on St. Charles Avenue. The street was hemmed in with people: the sidewalk, the pavement, everywhere, a mad throng that rose and fell with its own undefinable patterns. Everyone was wearing purple, green, and gold. Others held up their smartphones, taking random photographs, the light from the screens leaving swipes across the darkness. Women hiked up their tops, showing their breasts in the hope of receiving necklaces of beads or painted coconuts. Revellers drank Sazeracs from disposable plastic cups and danced to music that throbbed from boom boxes. The street lamps were festooned with tinsel and paper decorations, glitter cascading down in drifts. A mounted policewoman stood sentry at the end of the street, her horse stepping from foot to foot. Other cops in their light blue shirts and dark blue trousers patrolled the fringes, the usual rules relaxed just a little tonight.

  Milton looked around. The hullabaloo made him feel uncomfortable.

  “What’s the matter?” Izzy asked him.

  “Nothing. Just cautious. I can’t help it.”

  “Just try to enjoy yourself.”

  He smiled. “Not one of my strong points.”

  “You gotta relax, Milton.”

  “You’re right.”

  Ziggy looked over at them.

  “It’s over,” he said. “A week and we haven’t heard a word. It’s finished. Done.”

  Izzy nodded her agreement. “Listen to him! Everything’s fine.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I know.”

  But was it over? Milton was too naturally cautious to accept that. It had been a week to Fat Tuesday, and he had allowed Izzy to persuade him to stay on. He had never been in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and it was something that he wanted to tick off his bucket list. More than that, he knew, was a lingering reluctance to leave her. He would have to go eventually, of course, but he couldn’t shake the thought that Bachman was still out there. He had given it plenty of thought. In truth, he couldn’t get it out of his head. The odds were good that Bachman would have aborted the assignment and left town. Especially after Internal Affairs had swept through the mayor’s office and the ranks of the NOPD, arresting more than a dozen men and women and adding them to the employees of Joel Babineaux who had already been implicated in the corruption. Jackson Dubois had been picked up at his luxury home as he was making a ham-fisted attempt to pack away his life and leave. He and the others had all joined Babineaux in jail. None of them could look on the future with any degree of optimism.

  So, yes. It was most likely that Bachman was gone, submerged in the underworld once more until he resurfaced to take another job. But Milton couldn’t help but to remember what he had said about the woman who had died in the bayou. What if it was his wife, and what if he really did think that Milton had killed her? Even the longest odds came up now and again, and Milton had been wrong before. He couldn’t completely relax.

  There was a man who was selling Lucky Dogs over on the other side of the street. His stand was shaped like a foot-long dog, and there was a red and white Coca-Cola parasol overhead.

  Ziggy pointed over in his direction.

  “You want one?”

  “Sure,” Izzy said.

  “Milton?”

  “I could eat.”

  “And a beer?” Izzy suggested.

  Ziggy nodded. “You want a bottle, Milton?”

  He shook his head. “Some water, please.”

  “Coming up.”

  Milton watched him go, then turned back to the procession of krewes that were wending their way down the middle of the street. The first group were partying on a truck that had been decorated with a figurehead of a large male head. Men and women in purple robes and blacked-up faces tossed candy to the crowd below. Dancers in oversized papier mâché heads flanked the truck, garlanding the prettier girls with beads and leis. The next float was decorated with fibre-optic lights that flashed on and off, a blur of illumination. The successor had a large red lobster atop the cab, lights glowing from its claws. The next was done out in Zulu fashion, with hand-painted coconuts handed out to the crowds. A marching band followed close by, uptempo jazz reverberating back from the buildings that lined the route.

  Izzy stroked his arm. “Relax!”

  Milton knew that he must have looked uptight. He made an effort to smile at her, and she reached across and took his hand. He looked and saw that she had turned to face him, ignoring the procession, her face open and welcoming. He squeezed her hand, warm against his palm, but, as she moved a little closer, he felt his phone buzz in his pocket.

  He disengaged his hand and took it out.

  “What is it?”

  He looked down at the display. “Ziggy.”

  “Wants to know if we want mustard.”

  Milton put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

  There was no reply, just the background noise of the carnival.

  “Ziggy?”

  Still nothing.

  Milton craned his neck, looking through the crowd. The throng on the sidewalk was thick and deep, and Milton couldn’t see Ziggy. He looked over to the hot dog stall, but it was obscured by two girls on the shoulders of their male friends. The view cleared as they swayed out of the way. The vendor was serving someone else. Ziggy wasn’t there.

  Milton listened and heard Ziggy’s voice. He was protesting, the words muffled and unclear, but the tone unmistakable: fear.

  His face must have given away his concern. Izzy put her hand on his biceps and looked at him.

  “Ziggy?”

  Still nothing.

  Bachman.

  It must have been him.

  He didn’t know what to do. Bachman might be taunt
ing him, drawing him away from Izzy so that he could come around and collect her when he was out of the way. It would be safer to retreat, to take her with him and go somewhere safe, to go somewhere so he could see him coming.

  But Ziggy.

  What about him?

  “What?” Izzy mouthed.

  He held onto her hand and tugged her with him.

  He pushed through the scrum to the truck.

  “What is it, John?” she said.

  He shouldered right down the middle of a clutch of drunken jocks, probably lost from the Quarter, and reached the hot dog stand. There was no sign of Ziggy. No sign of Bachman, either. There was a metal fence behind the stand, and he clambered up it, hauling himself above the level of the crowd and scanning again. He turned back to Izzy. She was looking at him with a concerned expression on her face. He turned to the north, and, just maybe, saw a flash of scarlet before the crowd congealed around it and scrubbed it out.

  Ziggy was wearing red.

  “John, what? What is it?”

  He dropped down to the ground, took her hand again, and hurried north, tugging her along with him. A clutch of drunken girls were whirling and spinning, their drinks splashing out of their cups. He edged between them, picking up his pace as soon as they were clear of them. It was a little easier to move against the side of the buildings, but the maelstrom of noise and light was disorientating.

  He scanned, looking for Ziggy or Bachman. Faces blended together in the mêlée, difficult to make out as he moved through them, but none caught his attention.

  Izzy stopped, tugging back at Milton’s arm.

  “I’m not moving another step until you tell me what it is.”

  “Ziggy is in trouble.”

  “Milton!”

  It was a loud, desperate cry.

  He pushed and shoved his way through the crowd.

  “Milton!”

  He heard it above the clamour of the carnival, and turned in its direction. There was a patch of empty land between two derelict buildings, the ground rising up to a wire-mesh fence and, beyond that, a road. There was a gap in the fence and, behind that, he saw Ziggy. Bachman was next to him. It took a moment to realise that it was him. He was wearing a ball cap pulled down low over his eyes, and a leather jacket. His hand was inside his jacket, right where a shoulder holster would leave the butt of a pistol, and, as Milton watched, he grabbed Ziggy around the neck and threw him into the back of a waiting car.

  Milton surged ahead, barging through the middle of another group of rowdy jocks.

  One of them stepped in front of him. “No need to push, dude.”

  The man reached out with his left hand. There was no time for negotiation. Milton hit him in the gut, doubling him over as he brought the point of his elbow down, hard, on the back of his head. It was a blindingly quick motion, knocking the man out and dropping him to the ground.

  “Milton!” Izzy said, reaching for him.

  Two of the man’s friends were in the way. They had watched Milton’s demonstration, and now they regarded him with unmasked fear. They braced themselves, nerves obvious, but they didn’t move. Drunken bravado. Very inconvenient.

  “Get out of the way.”

  Milton shuffled to the right, tried to edge around them, but they found the confidence to block him. The man Milton had knocked down was starting to come around, too, on his knees and reaching for his friend’s arm to help him to his feet.

  Milton watched over their shoulders as Bachman went around to the front of the car and got inside.

  There was a squeal of rubber on asphalt and then the car was gone, disappearing into the night.

  #

  MILTON EXPLAINED what had happened as he and Izzy took a taxi back to Salvation Row. She listened quietly and, when he was finished, she put a hand on his knee. She said it wasn’t his fault. He knew that was right, that it wasn’t—that it would have been impossible to ward against someone like Bachman if he had it in his mind to come after him—but it didn’t make him feel any better. Ziggy was in terrible danger, might already even be dead, and it had happened on his watch. It was the second time, too.

  Once might have been an accident, although Milton didn’t believe in accidents.

  Twice was starting to look a lot like negligence.

  The taxi pulled up outside the house. The lights were burning, welcoming, and he thought about the meal that he had been promised. Elsie had prepared gumbo, Izzy had told him, a proper Louisianan meal to thank him for what he had done.

  Ziggy had been invited, too.

  They stepped out of the car into the sticky heat.

  “What are you going to do?” Izzy asked.

  “There isn’t much to do. We just wait. I—”

  He stopped mid-sentence and reached for his phone.

  Izzy’s eyes were wide. “Is it him?”

  He took it out and looked at the ID.

  It was displaying the number of the burner phone that Ziggy had been using.

  He nodded at her, accepted the call, and put it to his ear.

  “Hello, Milton.”

  Milton felt his stomach drop.

  Izzy looked at him enquiringly.

  “You’re wasting your time.”

  “I am?”

  “The job’s over. You lost. Get over it. Move on.”

  “I told you. This isn’t about the job.”

  He put his hand over the phone. “Go inside,” he said to Izzy. “I don’t know where he is. It might not be safe out here.”

  “No—” she began.

  “Please,” Milton interrupted, raising his voice a little. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She bit her lip, nodded, and crossed the lawn to the porch.

  Milton turned away and walked ten paces down the street. “You there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “I said you’re wasting your time. It isn’t going to work. I’m leaving tonight.”

  “Bit callous, Milton, even for you. What would your friend think about that?”

  “I don’t care what he thinks. He’s just a technician. He’s not my friend. He doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “It won’t matter when I peel his skin off, then, will it?”

  Milton gritted his teeth. “Do what you want.”

  “But it won’t end with him, will it? I’ll kill your friend, and then I’ll kill the girl, her brother, her family. And then I’ll kill anyone I can find who you’ve ever cared about. And then, when I’ve done that, when you’re drowning in guilt and misery, then I’ll kill you.”

  “You really want me for an enemy, Bachman?”

  He laughed. “Save it for someone you can frighten. Do you remember anything about me at all?”

  Too much, Milton thought. Much too much. “What do you want?”

  “You killed someone very dear to me.”

  “I just put her lights out. She was killed when you pumped bullets at us. A ricochet.”

  Bachman screamed down the line, “You’re lying!” His voice was suddenly torn and ragged, with an undercurrent to it that made Milton think of madness.

  He spoke calmly. “I’m sorry about what happened to her. But it wasn’t me.”

  If Bachman heard him, he didn’t acknowledge it. “We have a score to settle.”

  Milton left the phone at his ear and zoned out. He stared at the colourful houses, hearing the rustle of the wind through the trees on the lots that had still to be cleared, absently heard the call of a bird in the sky overhead. He had no doubt that Bachman meant every word he said. He felt as if he was being dragged back down into a world that he had only just been able to leave. It hadn’t been so long since Milton had found his freedom, putting an end to the threat from Control and the Group, and now he would exchange that for a pursuit by one of the most dangerous men in the world? A man who had been considered extreme, even by the extreme standards of the Mossad? A man good enough to fake his own death and elude Israeli intelligence? It would be just as bad as
before. It would be worse.

  And that was before he thought about Ziggy, Izzy, her mother and father, Alexander, and anyone else who got in his way.

  “Fine,” Milton said. “How do we settle it?”

  “You need to come and see me. You do that, alone, and I’ll let him walk. The others will never see me.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s a Six Flags.”

  “Six Flags? What?”

  “A fairground. Northeast of the city. They closed it after the flood. No one up here any more. There’s a central courtyard. A carousel. Meet me there.”

  “When?”

  “Midnight. And come alone. There’s nothing up here, Milton. Nothing and no one. I’ll see you as soon as you get within a mile of me. Anyone comes with you, I’ll put a bullet in your friend and I’ll leave. And then I’ll come after you and the others on my terms.”

  “I’ll be alone.”

  “Don’t be late.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  ELSIE BARTHOLOMEW had cooked them another Creole feast, but, this time, Milton had to struggle to finish his plate. It wasn’t that he wasn’t hungry—he was, very—it was that he had no appetite. Izzy had known better than to tell her parents what had happened and, when they asked where Ziggy was, she had lied that he had business to attend to in town. There was no sense in worrying them. She had shouldered the burden of conversation, filling the awkward spaces when Milton had missed the questions that were directed at him, giving him a moment to recover and respond with the kind of useless platitude he knew would have them think that he was vacant or distracted or, more likely, just rude.

  He thanked Elsie and Solomon when he had finished and, excusing himself on the pretext of wanting a smoke, went outside. He sat on the edge of the porch and put a cigarette in his mouth and then forgot about it, leaving it to hang there, unlit.

  He was angry with himself. No, he corrected, not himself, with his helplessness. One of the core principles of recovery was the self-awareness that, as a drunk, his disease would make him try to control everything. The inevitable failure from trying to do that would usher him closer to the one solution that every drunk knew was infallible.