by Robert Crais
René dropped what was left back into the pond.
“Spit it out.”
René spit something red and black and glistening into the grass. He walked a few feet away and sat down. LeRoy squinted after him, then hurried over for a closer look. “Goddammit, he’s sittin’ in red ants. Get up, fou!” René lumbered to his feet, and LeRoy brushed at his pants. “Ft de chien! Emplate!”
Milt Rossier shook his head, then took out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. It had to be a hundred degrees in the sun, and the sweat seeped out but had nowhere to go with the humidity. He said, “That boy is a trial.”
“I’ll bet.”
He looked back at me. “You know anythin’ about me, son?”
“I can guess.”
“Don’t let’s guess. I got business interests all over this parish, and I have to protect those interests. It’s the dollah, you see?”
“Sure.”
“Someone from outta town comes in, diggin’ aroun’, that can push things outta kilter.” He took out the cigar, examined it, then put it back in his mouth. “Whyyouheah,son?”
“I’m here because you’re blackmailing my client.”
He stared at me, and when he did I could tell that he didn’t know. I looked at Jimmie Ray, who was squirming like something from one of the ponds. It wasn’t Rossier; it was Jimmie Ray, all by his lonesome. I said, “I’m here because this asshole is blackmailing a woman in California.”
Jimmie Ray shrieked, “That’s a goddamned lie!” He waved a hand at Milt Rossier. “That’s pure bullshit, Milt! He’s makin’ this shit up!”
“No,” I said. “I’m not.” I looked at Jimmie Ray. “Three hours ago I broke into your house and found documents there relating to the birth of my client. I also found evidence linking you to a series of conversations with my client, predating a thirty-thousand-dollar deposit into your checking account.” I glanced back at Milt Rossier. “I don’t know what this has to do with whatever you’ve got going, but I don’t give a damn. All I care about is how it affects my client.”
Jimmie Ray said, “Oh, man, what a bare-faced liar!” Laughing like he couldn’t believe these lies.
Milt Rossier swiveled the Panama toward Jimmie Ray, his eyes hard black dots. “I thought you were workin’ for me, son. You out on your own?”
“This is bullshit, Milt. Who you gonna believe, me or this turd?”
Rossier squinted harder. “You bring me something and I pay for it, it’s mine.”
Jimmie Ray looked greasy and he kept shooting glances at René. “Hell, yes, it’s yours. This sumbitch is jus’ tryin’ to weasel!”
Rossier shook his head and sighed. “Goddammit.”
“I swear, Milt. I’m tellin’ you the truth.”
LeRoy came back and slapped Jimmie Ray on the back of his head, knocking the pompadour sideways. “Emplater.”
Jimmie said, “Hey!”
Milt Rossier spit at the weeds, then headed for the near building. “Y’all c’mon. Bring’m, LeRoy. René! You, too, now.”
We followed Rossier between the two buildings and out to a small circular pond surrounded by a low wire fence. LeRoy picked up a two-by-four as we walked. The banks of the pond were muddy and scummed with something green and slimy, probably runoff from the processing sheds. Rossier got there first and waited impatiently for the rest of us to catch up. He gestured at the pond with his cigar. “René. You get Luther. Be careful, now.”
I said, “Luther?”
Jimmie Ray shook his finger at me and laughed. “Yo’ ass is grass now, boy.”
René stepped over the fence, knelt at the edge of the little pool, and slapped the water. He slapped three or four times, and then something moved beneath the surface and the water swirled. René jumped in up to his knees and his hands plunged down and caught something that made him stagger. He found his balance and then his face went red with strain and he lifted out a snapping turtle that had to be three feet across and weigh almost two hundred pounds. It was dark and primordial with a shell like tank armor and a great horned head and a monstrous beak The head twisted and snapped and tried to reach Rend, but couldn’t. Its mouth was almost a foot across, and every time it snapped there was a sharp clicking sound, like a ruler rapping on a desk. René trudged up out of the water, stepped across the fence, and put Luther down. When he did, the turtle pulled its feet and head up under its shell. The head was so big it didn’t fit and its snout was exposed. LeRoy was grinning like a jack-o’-lantern. He waved the two-by-four in front of the turtle. The big head flashed out and the big jaws snapped and the board splintered. LeRoy beamed. “That Luther’s somethin’, huh?”
Jimmie Ray shook his finger at me some more. “We’ll see who’s lyin’now.”
Milt Rossier said something in French, and René grabbed Jimmie Ray and jerked him toward the turtle. Jimmie Ray said, “Hey!”
Jimmie Ray tried to pull away from René, but he didn’t have any better luck than Luther. René carried him by the back of the neck and the belt, and pushed him down on the ground just outside of Luther’s range. You could see the beady turtle eyes following the action from up under the shell. Jimmie was yelling, “Goddamn, Milt, stop id Please!” His eyes were big, and he had gone as white as typing paper.
Ren£ let go of Jimmie’s belt and grabbed his right forearm and forced his right hand toward the turtle. Jimmie Ray screamed.
Milt said, “Now you tell me true, son. You using my information to blackmail this gal?”
“I swear I ain’t, Milt. I swear.”
René.
René forced the hand closer. Luther’s eyes blinked, and the big jaws parted.
Milt said, “Try again, son.”
I took a half-step forward. “That’s enough, old man. Make him stop.”
Milt said, “LeRoy,” and LeRoy pointed the big .45 at me. LeRoy was grinning. Milt shook his finger at me. “You jes’ sit tight.” He stepped closer to Jimmie Ray and squatted beside him. “Ol' Luther looks like he’s anxious, boy. You better tell me.”
Jimmie Ray was babbling. “I didn’t see what it’d hurt. It didn’t have nothing to do with you or us and I thought I could just make a little extra cash please Milt please make’m stop I never woulda done it if I thought you’d be mad I swear to Christ!”
“All right, René. He’s done.” Jimmie Ray Rebenack had peed his pants.
René lifted Jimrnie Ray out of harm’s way. The wet stain spread across the seat of his pants and down his legs. Milt chewed on the cigar and stared toward the buildings. His eyes were small and hard and not a great deal different from the turtle’s. He moved the cigar at me. “The only reason you’re heah is because of this blackmail thing?”
“That’s it.”
Milt chewed on the cigar some more. “René, put ol’ Luther back.”
René put Luther back in the pond. Luther slipped beneath the water, and the water grew still. Milt said, “We feed ol’ Luther there catfish heads. Had a fella from LSU out here once said Luther might be better’n a century old.”
Jimmie Ray was on his knees with his face in his hands. I felt embarrassed and ashamed both for him and for me. Milt Rossier went over to Jimmie and patted his shoulder. “You see what dishonesty gets fo’ ya? You go behin’ my back, now this fella’s heah. You see where ya get?”
“I’m sorry, Milt. I swear to God I am.”
Milt Rossier looked over at me with the Luther eyes. He stared at me, thinking, until LeRoy said, “He was with some woman, Milt.”
Milt spit. “Yeah. I guess so.” Disappointed, as if he had come to a serious decision about something, only now to change his mind. He patted Jimmie Ray’s shoulder again, then helped him up. “C’mon, now, Jimmie Ray. Get up and stop blubberin’. You get yourself on outta heah.”
Jimmie Ray said, “I didn’t think I was doin’ any-thin’ wrong, Milt. I swear to Christ.”
“We’ll jus’ forget about it. Go on, now.”
Jimmie Ray looked like a man who
’d just won Lotto, like he couldn’t believe that Milt Rossier was giving him a pass on this one. Milt Rossier said, “Goddammit, get outta my sight.”
Jimmie Ray scrambled back to his Mustang, and the Mustang’s rear end fishtailed hard as he drove away.
Milt shook his head, then turned back to me. “You go on back where you come from and tell your woman everythin’s over with. What we got down here, it don’ have nothin’ to do with her, and nothin’ to do with you, either. You understand that?”
“Sure. You want me to go home. You want me to stop stirring things up.”
He nodded, looked at the cigar again, then tossed it in the pond. It floated for a second, sending out perfect circles, and then the water exploded and the cigar was gone.
Milt Rossier made a little dismissive gesture and walked away. “LeRoy, you see this fella gets back real safe, you hear?”
LeRoy said that he would.
René and LeRoy brought me back to the motel in the gold Polara and let me out in the parking lot. I watched them leave, then went to my room and tried to let myself in, but I couldn’t get the key in the lock. I tried as hard as I could, and then I sat on the sidewalk with my hands between my knees and pressed my knees together to try to make myself stop shaking. I pressed for a very long time, and finally the shaking stopped.
I double-locked the door and showered, letting the hot water beat into me until my skin was red and burning and I began to feel better about things.
I was out of the shower and getting dressed when Lucy Chenier returned my call. She said, “Sorry it’s taken so long. I was trying to find out about Milt Rossier.”
“I just came back from Milt’s. Before that, I broke into Jirnmie Ray Rebenack’s home and found what I believe to be the entire state file on Jodi’s adoption. I found other things, too, and I learned some things at Rossier’s that we need to talk about.” Maybe there was something in my voice that the shower hadn’t washed away. She didn’t say anything about the break-in.
“Can you drive back to Baton Rouge this evening?”
“Yes.”
“I have to leave the office soon to be home for Ben, but you could meet me there and we could have dinner. Is that all right?”
“That would be fine.”
Lucy gave me directions to her home and then we hung up. I dressed, then got the papers together from under the mattress, and drove back to Baton Rouge. I brought flowers.
The late afternoon was clear and bright when I found my way through a gracious residential area east of Louisiana State University to Lucy’s home. The streets were narrow, but the houses were large and set back on wide rolling lawns amid lush azaleas and oaks and magnolia trees, worthy digs for doctors and lawyers and tenured professors from LSU. I slowed several times for families on bicycles and young couples with strollers or elderly people enjoying a walk. Two girls and their dad were on one lawn, trying to launch a blue kite with no breeze; on another, an elderly man sat on a glider, gently swaying in the evening shade beneath an oak tree. Everything seemed relaxed and wonderful, the ideal environment in which to escape the realities of lying clients, enraged snapping turtles, and the loneliness of being far from home. Maybe I should move here.
Lucy Chenier lived in a brick colonial with a circular rock drive and a large pecan tree in the front yard. A knotted rope hung from the tree and, higher in the branches, several boards were nailed together into a small platform. Somebody’s treehouse.
I crunched into the drive, got out with the flowers and the documents, and went to the front door. When I had stopped for the flowers I had picked up a folder in which to hide the documents. Can’t very well be seen sneaking stolen documents into an attorney’s home. Might get her disbarred. The door opened before I reached it and a boy with curly brown hair looked out. He said, “Hey.”
“Hey. My name’s Elvis. Are you Ben?” He was looking at the flowers.
“Yes, sir. My mom’s on the phone, but she says you can come in.”
“Thanks.”
He opened the door wider and let me in. He was still with the flowers. Suspicious. “Are those for my mom?”
“Unh-hunh. Think she’ll like ‘m?”
Shrug. “I dunno.” Can’t give stray guys too much encouragement, I guess.
From somewhere in the house Lucy called, “I’m on with the office. I’ll be off in a minute.”
I called back. “Take your time.”
Ben stood straight and tall in cut-off jeans shorts and a gray LSU Athletic Department T-shirt. Every kid in Louisiana was probably issued an LSU T-shirt at birth. He led me through a spacious home that was neat and orderly, but still lived-in and comfortable and clearly feminine, with plenty of photographs in delicate frames and pastel colors and plants. The entry led into the family room and the kitchen. Everything was open and casual, with the family room flowing into the dining area, which looked out French doors across a brick patio and a large backyard. Tennis trophies filled the shelves of a wall-sized entertainment center in the family room, but pictures of Ben and books and ceramic animals were crowding out the trophies. I liked that. Balance.
Ben leaned against the counter that separated the kitchen from the family room, watching me. I said, “You play tennis like your mom?”
He nodded.
“She’s pretty good, huh?”
He nodded again.
“Can you beat her?”
“Sometimes.” He cocked his head a little bit to the side and said, “Are you a detective?”
“Doesn’t it show?”
He shook his head.
“I left my trench coat at the motel.”
“What’s a trench coat?”
Times change.
He said, “Is it run?”
“Most of the time it’s fun, but not always. You thinking about becoming a detective?”
He shook his head. “I want to be a lawyer like my dad.”
I nodded. “That’d be good.”
“He practices corporate law in Shreveport. He really goes for the jugular.” I wondered where he’d heard that.
Lucy came through the family room and smiled at me. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself.” I held out the flowers. Mr. Charming. “I didn’t want to come empty-handed.”
“Oh, they’re lovely.” Her eyes crinkled nicely when she took the flowers, and I flushed with a kind of pleasure that made me return her smile. She was wearing khaki hiking shorts and a loose white cotton top and sandals, and she seemed relaxed and comfortable in her home. Looking at her made me feel relaxed, too. “Let’s put them in water.”
Ben said, “Can I set the coals?”
“Not too many.”
Ben ran out the back, slamming through the French doors. Someone had set up a Weber grill on the patio, and he went to work with the coals. Lucy said, “I picked up potato salad and cole slaw from the market. I thought we’d grill hamburgers since we’re going to work Something simple.”
“Hamburgers are great.”
“Would you like a glass of wine?”
“Please. That would be nice.”
She took an unopened bottle of Sonoma-Cutre Chardonnay from her refrigerator, offered it to me with a corkscrew, and asked if I’d mind opening it. She put out two wineglasses, then used kitchen shears to trim the flowers before placing them in a simple glass vase. I poured the wine. When the flowers were finished, she said, “They’re absolutely lovely.”
“Drab. Drab and plain next to you.”
She laughed. “Tell me, do all men from Los Angeles come on this strong?”
“Only those of us with an absolute confidence in our abilities.”
The laugh became a smile, then she put on the red reading glasses and motioned at the folder, jammed with the documents and handwritten notes and phone bills. “Why don’t you tell me what happened while I see what we have?”
I went through everything that had happened since I’d last seen her, up to where René and LeRoy brought me to Milt’s
farm. I had arranged the papers with the state documents on top, so she saw those first. As I spoke, a vertical frown line appeared between her eyebrows and she no longer looked happy and relaxed. She said, “These are real. These are court-sealed documents. How could he get these?”
“I don’t know.”
“Illegally possessing these is a felony under state law. They’re numbered and referenced, and I can have their authenticity checked, but these are real. These papers do in fact show that Jodi Taylor was born Maria Johnson. I can’t believe he has these.”
“Had.”
Ben came in to tell us that the coals were ready to be fired and Lucy went outside to make sure he did it safely. I sat at the counter with my wine, watching them, and found myself smiling. Ben struck the big safety matches and tossed them on the coals while Lucy supervised. They looked comfortable and at ease with each other, and you could see Lucy in his features and in the confident way he carried himself. Reflections. When the flames were rising and the grill was in place, Lucy returned and smiled at me smiling at her. She said, “What?”
“You guys look good together. Happy. I like that.”
She turned and looked at her son. He had left the grill and was climbing into a pecan tree. A knotted rope hung from the limbs, just like the tree in the front yard, but he didn’t use the rope. She said, “You seem to have passed the test.”
“What test?”
“He’s leaving us alone. He’s very protective of me.”
“Does he have to guard you often?”
She looked smug. “Often enough, thank you.” She took two plates from the Sub-Zero, one with hamburger patties and the other with sliced onions and tomatoes and lettuce, both covered with Saran Wrap, and put them out to warm. She returned to the file, now skimming Rebenack’s handwritten notes. “Who’s Leon Williams?”
“I don’t know, but you can tell from what’s written that these are the notes Rebenack made when he was digging into Jodi’s past, so Williams might be significant.”
Lucy made a note on the legal pad. “I’ve got a friend at the Baton Rouge Police Department. I’ll see if they have anything.”
