Voodoo River

by Robert Crais

  Milt Rossier pulled up short, surprised. He knew me, but he’d never seen Pike before, and when Pike took out his .357 and let Rossier see it, the old man said, “Well, goddamn.”

  Pike said, “Let’s go back to the patio. Comfortable there.”

  Rossier looked back at me. “We ran you outta here. I thought you left.”

  I said, “Everybody always thinks that, Milt, and everybody’s usually wrong.”

  Pike said, “The patio.” Down below us, LeRoy Bennett was yelling for René to get his ass up to the house. René looked our way, but you couldn’t be sure what he saw or what he was thinking.

  Rossier frowned at Pike’s gun and then we went back to the patio. I said, “Sit down, Milt. We’ve got a business proposition.”

  Milt Rossier eased his bulk down into one of the white lawn chairs, and Pike lowered the gun. Rossier said, “Somebody got to old Jimmie Ray. I told you he’d stop messin’ with that little gal, and he has. I thought we were shut of that.” He tried looking at me, but he kept glancing at Pike and the gun. Nervous.

  I smiled. “Not that kind of business, Milt.” LeRoy Bennett was a white midget down between the ponds, arms and legs pumping as he ran toward us. René LaBorde was finally headed our way, walking with a stiff-legged lumbering gait like Frankenstein’s monster. I said, “Milt, here’s the word. You’re gettin’ screwed by Donaldo Prima, and we can double your money.”

  When I said Donaldo Prima the old man’s face tightened and he tried to put down the iced tea, but he missed the little table and it shattered on the patio. Just like Frank Escobar. Maybe poor hand-eye went with a life of crime. He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  I looked at Joe Pike. “Man, these guys come up with the good lines, don’t they, Joe?”

  Pike didn’t move. LeRoy was closer, and Pike was watching him. René was still down between the ponds, but he was getting up a head of steam. I guess Pike was thinking about having to shoot them.

  I said, “You and Donaldo are moving illegal aliens upriver through bayous upon which you hold the leases. Donaldo deals with the people down south and contracts with the illegals, and you provide inter-coastal transportation and a secure location through which they can enter the country.”

  Rossier was waving his hands, feeling panicked and trying to push up out of the chair. “I don’t know any of that. I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about.” Pike leaned forward and shoved him back. Rossier swatted at Pike’s hand the way you would swat at an aggravating gnat, and Pike palmed him hard once on the top of the head. Milt stopped the swatting. “I don’t know any Prima or illegal alien nonsense or anything else. You’d better get out of here right goddamn now ’fore I call the law!” Giving us an old man’s outrage.

  I held up two fingers. “Two words, Milt. Frank Escobar.”

  He stopped sputtering, and his eyes focused on me.

  “Escobar controls the coyote scene through the port of New Orleans and the intercoastal region. We left him a couple of hours ago. Prima used to work for Escobar, but now he’s gone into business for himself with you, and Escobar doesn’t like it that Prima’s taking his business. Prima’s getting the business because he’s cutting prices, and Escobar likes that even less. You following me with this, Milt?”

  Milt was squinting at me big time now.

  “And because Prima’s charging less, you are getting less. Do you see? You’re getting, what, a grand a head for your end?”

  Now Milt wasn’t bothering with the denials. We were with the money, and when you’re with the money you have their attention.

  “Frank will give you two grand apiece, Milt. Double your money. If you’re getting one load of illegals a week, thirty people on average, that’s thirty thousand a week, one hundred twenty thousand a month from Mr. Prima. But Frank doubles it. The thirty becomes sixty. The one-twenty becomes two hundred forty thousand per month, every month, just for using Escobar and cutting out Prima. Are we talking about the same thing, now, Milt?”

  LeRoy Bennett chugged up to the patio, winded and barely able to keep his feet. He saw the gun in Pike’s hand and clawed under his shirt, trying for his own piece. Pike punched him once in the side of the face. Bennett dropped. Pike bent over and disarmed him. Pike said, “Some muscle.”

  Rossier stared at LeRoy thoughtfully and said, “I am surrounded by dunces.”

  I made a little shrug.

  Rossier shook his head and settled back into the lawn furniture. “Well, I guess you’re the new Jimmie Ray Rebenack, aren’t you? He thought he tripped over Easy Street, too. Look where he is.”

  “Milt, Jimmie Ray and I aren’t even from the same planet. Don’t forget that and we’ll be okay.”

  René lumbered up and stopped at LeRoy, and then he looked at Joe Pike, and the big body gave a shudder. His eyes focused, and he stepped across LeRoy and Pike brought up the Python. “I’ll kill him.”

  Milt Rossier screamed, “René! Goddamn it, you stop right there, René.” The old man’s face was mottled, and he looked close to apoplexy.

  René looked confused. LeRoy moaned, then rolled over and saw René staring down at him. “Don’t just stand there, you dumb fuck, help me up.”

  René picked up LeRoy as if he were made of air. LeRoy hobbled to one of the lawn chairs, holding his side. “Got a goddamned stitch from d’ run.”

  Pike said, “Exercise.”

  Bennett scowled. “You fuck. We’ll see ’bout it, sometime, heh?”

  Pike said, “Unh-hunh.”

  Rossier said, “Forget all that right now. We’re talkin’ business.” He looked back at me. “What do you get out of this?”

  “We get what Escobar pays you for the first delivery. Call it sixty thousand.” Big lies are always easier.

  “Bullshit.”

  “What’s the bullshit, Milt? I’m brokering the deal. You would’ve kept going with Prima because you don’t know any better, with him laughing behind your back. I’ve figured it out for you, and I’ve set it up. Your money doubles right away, and for this service, Joe and myself get exactly one week’s take. After that it’s all yours. You recoup in two weeks over what you were making from Prima.” I gestured to Joe Pike. “Seems fair to me, Joe. How about you?”

  Pike nodded. “Fair.”

  You could see Milt Rossier working it through, thinking about all that free money just for giving the spies a place to dock their boats. Convincing himself. That’s the way the best cons work, they convince themselves. He said, “Frank Escobar, huh?”

  I said, “Let me give you a couple of pointers, Milt. Two a head is top end, so don’t start thinking you can get Prima to pay more. Frank is looking for what we call exclusivity here, and he will want to make sure that Donaldo is permanently out of the picture. Do we understand each other?”

  “Unh-hunh.”

  “Frank wants you to let Prima bring in another load, only this time we’ll all be out there at the pumping station together. Prima won’t know about Frank and Frank’s people, of course, because if he did, he wouldn’t show. When he shows, Frank wants to pay him back personally, you see?”

  Milt Rossier was shaking his head. “He don’t need me there for that.”

  “Yeah, Milt, he does. Frank figures that if you’ll sell out Prima, you’ll sell out him, too, so you guys are going to have to make a marriage out there. No marriage, no two grand per. Two hundred forty thou every month, Milt. Prima won’t be going home, but everybody else lives happily ever after.”

  Milt Rossier was thinking about it.

  I gave him the phone number that Ramon del Reyo had given me. “I’m giving you a number to call. Call it if you want, or not. Up to you. It’s not Escobar, but it’s his people. If you’re interested, check out if the deal is real. If not, blow it off. Your choice.”

  He took the little slip and looked at it. “What’s to keep me from cutting you out?”

  “Milt, you don’t live in a fortress. You cut us out, you’re o
ver.”

  Pike twitched the .357.

  LeRoy Bennett said, “Oh. Yeah.”

  Milt Rossier stared at Pike for a time, then glanced over at LeRoy. LeRoy was feeling a little better, but his eye was swelling where Pike had hit him. It probably didn’t inspire confidence. Rossier said, “I’ve gotta think on it. How can I let you know?”

  I told him where we were staying in Baton Rouge, and then Pike and I started back around the house. Milt Rossier called after us. “Hey.”

  We turned back.

  Rossier said, “Podnuh, if either of you ever pull a gun on me again, you’d best use it.”

  I smiled at him. “Milt, if we pull a gun on you again, we will.”

  34

  When we got back to Baton Rouge I called Jodi Taylor’s room from the lobby and got no answer. The desk clerk told me that she had checked out sometime in the early afternoon and that she had left neither note nor message. He said that she seemed distraught. Hearing that she had gone created an empty feeling in my chest, as if I had somehow left a job unfinished and, because of it, had performed beneath myself. I said, “Well, damn.”

  Pike said, “It’s a good night. Clear. I’m going for a run.” The lobby was empty except for Pike and myself and the clerk. Desultory voices leaked from the bar. “Come with me.”

  “Give me a chance to make some calls.”

  He nodded. “Meet you out front.”

  We rode up to our rooms, and I changed into shorts and running shoes and then called Lucy. I told her what had happened with Escobar and Rossier and that there was nothing left to do except wait and see if Rossier would go for it. I asked her if she’d heard from Jodi Taylor. Lucy said, “Yes. And from Sid Markowitz. Sid is saying that they’ll sue. I’m not so sure that Jodi wants that, but she sounds upset and confused.”

  “Did she say anything about Edith Boudreaux?”

  “No.”

  Neither of us spoke for a time, and then Lucy said, “Studly?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Ben’s going to bed at ten. You could come over and we could neck in the car.”

  “Pike and I are going for a run. It’s been a helluva day.”

  She sighed. “Just so you know.”

  “I knew there was a reason I called you.”

  We hung up and I phoned Jo-el Boudreaux next. I told him exactly what I had told Lucy, and when I was done he said, “Did they go for it?”

  “We’ll see. Rossier will dig around to see if we’re legit, and when he finds out we have something working with Escobar, he’ll decide.”

  “Okay. Then what?”

  “He’ll call me here. When he calls, I call Escobar. We won’t have much time, so you have to be ready.”

  “I can get my guys in five minutes. Bet your ass on that one, podnuh.”

  “Whatever.”

  Pike was waiting out on the cement drive at the hotel’s entry, stretching his hamstrings. I joined him, bending deep from the hips until my face was buried between my knees, then sitting with my legs in a great wide V and bending forward until my chest was on the cement. After a day spent mostly driving, and with the tension of dealing with criminal subhumans, it felt good to work my muscles. Maybe I wasn’t down about Jodi Taylor after all. Maybe I had merely grown loggy from a lack of proper exercise and was in serious need of oxygenation. Sure. That was it. What’s bailing out on a client compared to proper physical conditioning?

  Pike did a hundred pushups, then flipped over and lay with his legs straight up against the wall and did a hundred situps. I did the same. The kid from the front desk came out and watched, standing in the door so he could keep an eye on the desk. He said, “Man, you guys are flexible. Goin’ for a run?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Gotta be careful where you run. We got some bad areas.”

  I said, “Thanks.”

  “I’m not kidding. The downtown isn’t great. Any direction you go, you’re gonna run into the blacks.”

  Pike said, “I think I hear your phone.”

  The kid ducked inside, then reappeared shaking his head. “Nah. Must’ve been something else.”

  As my muscles warmed, the tension began to loosen and fall away like ice calving from a glacier and falling into the sea.

  The kid said, “They say we’re one of the top ten most dangerous cities in the country.” He seemed proud of it.

  I said, “We’ll be careful.”

  Pike said, “Let’s get going before I hit this twerp.”

  We ran south along the street that paralleled the levee, then up the little rise past the old state capitol building and then east, away from the river. The night air was warm, and the humidity let the sweat come easily. I concentrated on my breath and the rhythms of the run and the commitment needed to match Pike’s pace. The run became consuming in its effort, and the focus needed to endure it was liberating. The downtown business area quickly gave way to a mix of businesses and small, single-family homes. Black. We ran along a major thoroughfare and the traffic was heavy, so we stayed on a narrow sidewalk as much as possible. The blocks were short and the cross-streets were numbered, and each time we crossed one you could get a glimpse of the lives in the little neighborhoods. We passed African-American kids on skateboards and bicycles, and other African-American kids playing pepper in the streets or tackle football on empty lots. They stopped as we passed and watched us without comment, two pale men trekking swiftly along the edge of their world, and I wondered if these were the areas the desk clerk had been talking about. As we ran, Pike said, “You did your best for her.”

  I took steady breaths. “I know.”

  “But you’re not happy with yourself.”

  “I let her down. In a way, I’ve abandoned her.” I thought about it. “It’s not the first time she’s been abandoned.”

  A lone running black man turned onto the street across from us and matched our pace. He was about our age, with a receding hairline and ebony skin and the slight, lean torso of a serious runner. Like us, he was shirtless, clothed only in shorts and running shoes, his chest and back slicked with sweat and shining the way highly polished obsidian might shine. I glanced over at him, but he ran eyes forward, as if we were not opposite him, and pretty soon I found that my eyes were forward, too, though I could see him in the periphery. I said, “She hired me to do one thing, and now I’m doing another. She hired me with every expectation that I would protect her interests, but now I’m taking this in a direction in which her interests are secondary.”

  We ran past a high school and shopping centers, Pike and me on our side of the street and the black runner on his, our strides matching. Pike said nothing for several minutes, and I found comfort in the loud silence. The sounds of our breathing. Our shoes striking the pavement. A metronome rhythm. Pike said, “You didn’t fail her. You gave her an opportunity for love.”

  I glanced over at him.

  “You can’t put something into her heart that isn’t there, Elvis. Love is not so plentiful that any of us can afford to reject it when it’s offered. That’s her failing. Not yours.”

  “It’s not easy for her, Joe. For a lot of very good reasons.”

  “Maybe.”

  The black runner picked up his pace and moved ahead of us. Pike and I glanced at him in the same moment, and we picked up our pace, too. We caught him, matched him, and then we pulled ahead. Our lead lasted for a few hundred meters before he once again came abreast of us. I pushed harder, Pike pushing as one with me, and the runner across from us pushed harder still. My breath was coming in great, quick gasps, the oxygen-rich Louisiana air somehow energizing, the sweat dripping out of my hair and into my eyes, and we ran ever harder, sprinting now, we on our side of the street, he on his, and then we came to a busy intersection and slowed for the light and I turned to the other runner, smiling and intending to wave, but the black runner was gone. He had turned away from us with the cross-street, I guess, and I tried to find him but he was no longer there. W
e jogged in place, waiting for the light, and I found myself wishing I had called to him earlier. Now, of course, it was too late.

  The light changed. Pike and I pushed on, and the miles crept behind us and the night grew late. We came to a park of soccer fields and softball diamonds, and we turned north, running along the western edge of the fields, and then west again, heading back to the river and the hotel. We had been running for almost an hour. We would run an hour still. Pike said, “Are you still thinking about her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then think about this. You’ve taken her as far as is right. Wherever she’s going, she has to get the rest of the way on her own. That’s not only the way it is. That’s the way it should be.”

  “Sure, Joe. Thanks.”

  He grunted. Philosphy-R-Us. “Now stop thinking about her and start think about Rossier. If you don’t get your head out your ass, Rossier will kill you.”

  “You always know how to end the moment on an upbeat note, don’t you?”

  “That’s why I get the big bucks.”

  35

  Milt Rossier called at fourteen minutes after nine the next morning. First thing out of his mouth was, “I’ll go along for twenty-five hunnerd a head.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Twenty-two five, then, goddammit, or I’ll just leave things the way they are.”

  I hung up on him. If I had a strong hand, I’d play it. If I didn’t, he’d know I was shooting blanks.

  Six minutes later the phone again rang and he said, “Twenty-one hunnerd, you sonofabitch. You know goddamn well there’s some give. Be reasonable.”

  I thought my heart was going to come through my nose. “There’s more, Milt, but I’m taking it. It’s a one-shot, then I’m back home and out of it. After that, if you can screwdriver Escobar out of the extra cash, go for it.”