Burnt Black

by Ed Kovacs

  I didn’t say anything. I’d still be checking with personnel to confirm Fournier’s family history.

  “When was this?”

  “About three years ago. We argue sometimes. But … what family doesn’t? So I owe him a lot, and that made it easy to say yes.”

  “Yes to what?”

  “To go undercover and gather information so he could arrest Robert Drake.”

  The notion had occurred to me, but I’d rejected it because I couldn’t believe Tony Fournier would be willing to use her as bait. But to prostitute his brother’s daughter in an attempt to make an arrest that had eluded him for years was beyond low.

  I glanced at her purse. Had Tony planted tracking devices in Anastasia’s things, since he had her working clandestinely? Was he tracking her cell phone? Even though Fournier didn’t know where I lived, I wouldn’t want him clocking my address electronically.

  “So exactly how did you set out on your task?”

  I casually stood and crossed to a cabinet where I kept a portable cell-phone-jamming device. Out of her line of sight, I switched it on and picked up a cigar lighter, so she would assume I’d gone to the cabinet to get the lighter.

  “I started stripping at a club on Bourbon. Let it be known I was broke, living in my car. That my ex had abused me. I wasn’t hooking then, just dancing. Kate Townsend showed up there within a week. Said she’d heard about me and my problems and asked if I needed a place to stay.”

  “And you said yes,” I said, sitting back down. I lit a Dominican panatela in an effort to encourage her to light up.

  “Sure, that was the plan.”

  Recalling what Vermack had said about Drake and Townsend having split long ago, I asked, “Why did Tony think you could get to Drake through Townsend?”

  “She was his high priestess. They saw each other all the time, even though I learned they weren’t as close as they used to be.”

  “You know Drake well?”

  “Not well, but I know him.”

  “You’ve had sex with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did your uncle feel about that?”

  She looked away from me, started to reach for her purse but stopped. “Mind if I get my cigarettes?”

  Excellent. I nodded for her to go ahead. She retrieved a Cartier lighter and a pack of super-slim smokes and lit up. “I don’t think he felt too good about that.”

  “Did they try to recruit you into the Crimson Throne?”

  “They asked me to come as a guest. I don’t know anything about magic, just what Uncle Tony has explained to me, so I didn’t fit in to their group.”

  “How many times did you attend one of their meetings?”

  “Eight or nine.”

  “Since you don’t know anything about magic, why did they keep inviting you back?”

  “Because they like doing me. They use me to get themselves all worked up, I guess.”

  “You had sex with all of the members? Townsend, Valencia, Sanchez, Ruiz, Vermack?”

  “Yes,” she said, without embarrassment.

  “Are you sharing Kate Townsend’s bed?”

  She looked downward and flicked some ash into the ashtray.

  “In a way. I didn’t want to work as a clerk in her shop, so she taught me the ropes of being a call girl. I work very late every night and usually go out and party. Or I’ll drive back to LaPlace and sleep at the house. Make a report to Uncle Tony in the morning. Sometimes I sleep at Kate’s during the day and she … joins me.”

  It all added up. Pathetic that Fournier had done this to his niece, but it added up.

  “What have you told Tony that could help nail Drake?”

  “I report everything to him. Everything I see or hear. All kinds of details. I don’t know what might be important, that’s up to him.”

  “What have you learned about the deaths of Felix Sanchez, Roscindo Ruiz, and Becky Valencia?”

  “Kate says Felix and Roscindo OD’d. And Becky accidentally put a needle in the wrong place. Isn’t that true?”

  “What does Tony say about the deaths?”

  “He hasn’t said anything, really.”

  So Anastasia didn’t know there was a ritualistic killer on the loose and that the killer was probably an acquaintance of hers.

  “What do you make of Hans Vermack?”

  “He’s cheap, that’s for sure. And I wish he wasn’t so cruel. He’s into a lot of fetishes. He likes to make a sex partner feel pain.”

  Throw in the religious connection and you have the MO of the murderer. I certainly wouldn’t remove him from the suspect list.

  “So there’s no master plan to lure Drake or any of the others into some kind of trap? You know, get them to commit a crime so your uncle could make a citizen’s arrest?”

  “Nothing that I know about.” She took another drink, draining her glass faster than a fat Russian.

  At the very least, Fournier had taken a calculated gamble. Even if she wasn’t found out, if Drake was really a killer of transients, Anastasia was a prime target.

  Still, I had to consider if Anastasia could be the murderer. But her name hadn’t come up with any of the suspects. And I couldn’t fathom a motive. She didn’t appear to be involved in the cultish aspect of the case, and I doubted she acted as some kind of avenging angel for Tony Fournier. Besides, Tony had no revenge motives against the group’s members; he only wanted to see Drake behind bars.

  “Can I use the ladies’ room?”

  “Through the kitchen, to your right.”

  She reached for her purse.

  “Leave the purse,” I said with a tone suggesting there was no room for negotiation on that point.

  She walked into the kitchen area. And yes, I admired her figure as she went, but there was no way in hell I would touch her. I held fast to the theory that the victims had all been poisoned or drugged—in Valencia’s case, in addition to having a fatal acupuncture needle inserted. So I’d looked carefully to note Anastasia had no pockets in her outfit and wore no jewelry that could function as a secret vial full of some exotic toxin.

  I looked to her purse and calculated an excuse to search it. I’d tell her she might be being monitored by Drake or Townsend and I needed to check. So I rifled the bag. Cell phone, keys, makeup, small wallet, condoms. No weapon, nothing out of the ordinary.

  It would take time to look for a tracking device, and the issue became moot as Anastasia suddenly reappeared, wearing only high heels, red bra, and red panties.

  “Whoa, whoa. Put some clothes on. The five hundred bucks is yours, but not for sex, okay? That’s not my game.”

  She walked right up to me and leaned over, so I had an eyeful of substantial cleavage.

  “But I want to play with you. Not because of anything else, except … I wanted you since I first saw you with the blond detective going into Crafty Voodoo.”

  “You told Tony I’d seen you in the window at Townsend’s?”

  “No, because I wasn’t sure what you saw. But when you came to LaPlace, you undressed me with your eyes. I know you want it, and so do I.”

  “No, Anastasia, I don’t ‘want it,’ and that’s not going to happen. So please go put your clothes on. We’re almost finished here.”

  As she moved her hand behind my neck, the door to the stairs opened.

  “I tried to call you, Saint James, but…”

  Honey stepped into the room. She had her own keys to my place. She took in the sight of me with a half-dressed Anastasia leaning over me, her breasts in my face and arm around my neck.

  Damn, she tried to call, but I had a cell-phone jammer blocking Anastasia’s cell signal … and my own.

  Honey seemed to implode into herself and backed away quickly, slamming the door behind her.

  I sprang up from the couch. “Where do you keep your car parked?”

  “I didn’t bring my car.”

  “I know, but the Lexus, where do you keep it parked?”

  “Private lot off
Chartres at Toulouse.”

  “Okay, get dressed. You have to go. We’ll talk again soon.”

  “Should I tell Uncle Tony about this?”

  “No. Let me handle that. I need to have a serious conversation with him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  When I arrived at Honey’s house her car was nowhere to be seen, but a voodoo doll was nailed to her front door. Damn this fucking case! I ripped the cloth figurine free, set fire to it with my lighter, and dropped it into the gutter where it burned quickly, releasing a thick, inky smoke.

  I moved into the shadow at the edge of Honey’s house, a house that I had purchased for her myself after coming into a financial largesse. I had keys, I could have waited inside, but tonight was all about establishing new boundaries, so I stood waiting for over an hour, listening to drunken laughter and ribald conversation coming from inside Vaughn’s Lounge, which sat right next door.

  Finally, Honey’s borrowed police unit rounded the corner and parked right in front of her doorstep. The voodoo doll had burned to ash and I don’t think she even noticed it.

  She must have stopped to pound a couple somewhere because she staggered slightly as she got out of the car, and then stumbled on the sidewalk. Good. I sprang from the darkness and stood between her and her front door. I hit “play” on my digital audio recorder with the sound turned up all the way.

  “Whoa, whoa. Put some clothes on. The five hundred bucks is yours, but not for sex, okay? That’s not my game.”

  “But I want to play with you. Not because of anything else, except … I wanted you since I first saw you with the blond detective going into Crafty Voodoo.”

  “You told Tony I’d seen you in the window at Townsend’s?”

  “No, because I wasn’t sure what you saw. But when you came to LaPlace, you undressed me with your eyes. I know you want it, and so do I.”

  “No, Anastasia, I don’t ‘want it,’ and that’s not going to happen. So please go put your clothes on. We’re almost finished here.”

  “I tried to call you, Saint James, but…”

  I clicked off the recorder. To ease out of confrontational mode, I simply sat on her front steps and watched her closely without staring. Honey tottered slightly as her rage melted into something else. Embarrassment? Her eyes were red; she’d obviously been crying. She took a tentative step forward. After a moment, with some determination, she sat down next to me.

  We sat in silence, enveloped by the scent of whiskey and cigarettes seeping out from Vaughn’s rotting clapboard facade. The first licks of “Green River” by Credence Clearwater Revival twanged on the bar’s sound system.

  I looked to Honey and knew that she wasn’t going to say anything, that I couldn’t pry a word out of her with a crowbar. We could sit here and listen to the entire repertoire of Credence and she’d just remain mute. So to make things easier for us both, I launched into a machine-gun fast explanation of how I’d staked out Townsend’s bordello and set up the sting with Anastasia. “Now would you please listen to the whole recording, beginning to end? Because we have a serious problem.”

  She nodded and didn’t say a word as we sat on her steps listening to the recording. When it finished, I pocketed the recorder and looked at her.

  “We need to come down hard on Fournier before he gets his niece killed. And maybe screws up our official investigation. So please think about that tonight and be ready to discuss our options tomorrow.”

  She nodded.

  I could see her demeanor had softened a bit. Maybe she wanted to say something, maybe apologize, but I wasn’t going to let her. I’d been waiting long enough, in more ways than one.

  “On a personal note, it’s obvious that we haven’t been getting along since the morning this case fell into our laps. Okay, every relationship has bumps, but what I realize now is that the nature of our relationship has to change. For me, starting now, it has changed. I love you, you mean the world to me, but I’m not waiting for you anymore. I mean, how long has it been without you explaining anything to me? You won’t even discuss having a real relationship. So no more sleeping together without sex, no more kissing without sex, no more sexual stuff without the payoff. And I’m not asking you to give me the payoff. I’m not asking for a damn thing. We’re best friends, period. Nothing more. I’m through with the guilt. I’m declaring my freedom, do you understand?”

  I was starting to get worked up, but I didn’t care. I wanted to get this off of my chest.

  “For you to even imagine that I might have sex with Anastasia, a suspect in our murder investigation, means that you don’t think too highly of me as a professional. So I’m not even sure we should keep working together. Because if you don’t trust my judgment … maybe I’ll be taking that three-month vacation a lot sooner than I planned.”

  I stood. “Green River” had segued to “Proud Mary” then to “Born on the Bayou,” and as John Fogerty sang about an old hound dog chasing down a hoodoo, I turned away from Honey and walked up Lesseps toward Burgundy, where I’d parked the Bronco. I heard her front door slam shut behind me as the laughter and music from Vaughn’s faded in my wake. So be it. I hadn’t meant to mention the CIA stuff, but screw it. In a way, I’d be protecting Honey in the future by not becoming romantically linked, since my inclination was to accept Twee’s offer. It would be better if I entered the clandestine service as a single guy, not a family man.

  My destination now was B.J.’s Lounge, a place where you could show up in your underwear and be overdressed. B.J.’s sat on the corner of Lesseps and Burgundy, and I felt like I could use a couple of pops.

  But I never made it to B.J.’s.

  As I traversed a dark stretch of Lesseps, walking in the middle of the street as I always do on poorly lit, deserted roads to make it harder to get jumped, I felt the sting of Taser darts puncture my back, and my body snapped rigid as thousands of volts and who-knows-how-many milliamperes zapped me. Wracked with excruciating pain, I fell like a stone to the pavement, flat on my back, unable to control muscle function. Some guys scream when they get tased, but I couldn’t. In spite of the pain, a million thoughts raced through my mind: Were they using a police or civilian model? Was I going to get a five-second cycle or thirty? Were they dialing up the juice to really hurt me? How could I regain advantage when the tasing stopped?

  Damn, they were giving me thirty. My arms started to flop. I was drooling. It felt like a thousand banshees fought inside my nervous system, screaming to escape.

  And then it stopped.

  Recovery is generally quick, especially for guys in good shape who’ve been tased before, meaning me. But I wasn’t quick enough.

  A foot slammed into my groin. Two Mexican guys grabbed my wrists and gift-wrapped them with gray duct tape, aka gaffer’s tape, aka thousand-mile-an-hour tape, effectively handcuffing me. They pulled me to my feet.

  Las Calaveras. The Skulls.

  A third gangster stuffed into my mouth a dirty rag that stank of gasoline and caused me to gag. Four strong men carried me toward a dark van. No matter how much I struggled and tried to kick and break free, they held on.

  They threw me face-first into the back of the van. I cushioned the landing as best I could since my taped hands had some freedom of movement. As I tried to spring to my feet, a devastating blow rocked my right kidney.

  They were beating me with a steel pipe.

  Massive pain shot all the way into my upper abdomen, and I collapsed, retching, the vomit rising in my throat.

  But there was a rag stuffed in my mouth and the vomit had nowhere to go.

  Shit, I was about to drown in my own vomit in the back of a dirty van at the hands of the Skulls. Jesus God, help me. Please help me.

  Searing pain as another blow landed. The worst pain I’d ever felt in my life caused tears to spurt from my eyes as I heard them speaking in Spanish. I was about to pass out, maybe forever, when the rag got pulled from my mouth and I puked.

  My head spun. My eyes were closed, b
ut bright shafts of light stabbed at my consciousness. The van was moving, somebody driving. I opened my eyes but couldn’t see, it was so dark. Hands searched my many pockets, relieving me of wallet, keys, two knives, cell phones, digital recorders, and all the many gadgets that I always carried. My Ruger semiauto was pulled from the paddle holster under my shirttails and the Browning drawn out of the inside-the-pants holster at the small of my back.

  Miraculously, somehow—and this gave me a glimmer of hope—in the dark of the van as it jostled on a bumpy road, they missed the karambit tucked into my waistline above my groin. It had to be due to the placement of my taped hands—a big mistake to tape them in front of me. Since they found the other two knives, I doubted they expected to find a third. And how many guys carry a knife tucked over their penis? I had a weapon. They missed it.

  I’d almost gotten to use the karambit on a Russian assassin once. Now I had to figure a way, and fast, for that karambit to draw its first blood. If I could get one finger into the hole in the handle of the karambit, I’d be in business.

  I strained to reach it but realized it would be impossible in my current position. So I reviewed my situation: They’d taped my feet together with duct tape, and they weren’t stingy with the tape. The van reeked of gasoline and some other chemicals. Why? Oh, shit, I hope they aren’t going to set me on fire.

  They could have already killed me, so I was being kept alive for now. To be taken to Drake? To hang me on a hook in his taxidermy room and take a chainsaw to me? Or maybe just a simple beheading with a dull knife. Drake was into heads, after all.

  Whatever it would be, it would be excruciating. Extremely painful. Much more agonizing than everything so far, and I promise you that the last ten minutes had already earned top ranking on my World of Hurt list. Physical pain was something that I could often tune out, although tonight didn’t seem to be one of those times. I wasn’t at all sure that I could ignore a rusty hacksaw to my neck.

  The van lurched to an abrupt stop, way too soon for my liking. Only the faintest sliver of light trickled in from the windshield.

  Then the side doors opened, and a bit more light was quickly blocked by the hulking figures that pulled me outside.