by Ed Kovacs
TITLE PAGE
Good Junk
A Cliff Saint James Novel
Ed Kovacs
The Phoenix Group
Los Angeles & Bangkok
PRAISE FOR ED KOVACS
For Good Junk:
“…the scenes of New Orleans are rich and real. Kovacs hopeless, elegiac vision of the city is touching, and his quick studies of hidden landmarks like the outré bar in the French Quarter that calls itself Pravda, and Pampy’s, a purveyor of soul food to politicians, are written with true affection and terrific humor.” –THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
“Powerful prose that evokes a city still struggling to recover its infrastructure and identity elevates this well beyond most other contemporary PI novels.” –PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY, BOXED, STARRED REVIEW
*****
For Storm Damage:
“A sleeper here, a beautiful spin on hard-boiled fiction, and it’s all done with style and energy.”— BOOKLIST
“Kovacs noir take on the thriller will hook readers.”—ASSOCIATED PRESS
“Kovacs is a vivid addition to the thriller genre.” —STEVE BERRY, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
“Kovacs writes like a master.” —GAYLE LYNDS, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
“Highly recommended.”—JONATHAN MABERRY, NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
*****
For The Russian Bride:
“This is a thriller packed so full of action, it leaves readers breathless. Kovacs does an incredible job at being technically accurate and easy to understand, so readers of all levels are engaged throughout. A must-read for fans of fast-paced stories that don’t let you go till the very end.”—RT BOOK REVIEWS
“Brisk, easy-to-read thriller” – PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY
“Quick, entertaining action.” – KIRKUS REVIEWS
*****
For Burnt Black:
“The vibrant description of occult doings mixes well with the movements of the earthbound characters, making this Cliff and Honey’s best outing to date.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS
“The rough around the edges locale will be catnip to some readers, like myself. The book has more twists and turns than the streets and back alleys of New Orleans.”—CRIMINAL ELEMENT
*****
For Unseen Forces:
“Indiana Jones on steroids.”—COL. JOHN ALEXANDER, AUTHOR OF “FUTURE WAR”
“A spellbinding thriller that will keep you riveted well past midnight.”— ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
“A real page-turner rivaling The Da Vinci Code.”—PHENOMENA MAGAZINE
“A taut, suspenseful story that keeps the reader riveted until the very end.”—MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
“Terrific debut novel that deserves to be on the bestseller lists.”—THE DAILY GRAIL
“I couldn’t wait to get back to it after I put it down.”—PAUL SMITH, AUTHOR OF “READING THE ENEMY'S MIND
*****
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BOOKS BY ED KOVACS
Unseen Forces
Storm Damage
Good Junk
Burnt Black
The Russian Bride
Locked Down
DEDICATION
For Mileena Amika, who wasn’t afraid to roll the dice for one more go ’round.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
How fortunate I am to have encountered teachers and mentors and purveyors of encouragement along the long and sometimes lonely road of the author.
Thank you Mr. Gurley, Miss Johnson, Doug Hobbie, Danny Simon, Jackie Kahane, Steven Whitney, Saraswati Smith-Stegman, Randall Fitzgerald, David Tseklenis, Lisa Chan, and all of the many others who gifted me with sparks of light as I navigated my way.
I’m lucky that Carl Scholl and Tony Ritzman are still looking out for me. Chris Graham does yeoman’s service on my Website and other tasks that shall not go unsung. As for Ed Stackler, he is simply terrific; thanks once again, Ed, and keep sticking to your guns when we cross pens.
Police Chief Robert Hecker, Harbor Police, Port of New Orleans, was of great help and was one of the true heroes to emerge during the chaos of Hurricane Katrina. Jorge Young of Fontai Metal and Equipment Company in Southern California kindly shared his expertise regarding the scrap business.
Former New Orleans Police Department Captain Eric Morton made for a hell of a detective. He has a generous spirit and can cook a mean pork butt; there’s a connection there, somewhere. Blue skies, partner.
Detective Myron Gaudet of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office could be a tough-guy Hollywood action star, but he wouldn’t be acting. I still owe you, brother.
Neungreuthai Chanphonsean is, hands down, the coolest customer around and gets the nod for Biggest Thanks of All, right along with a huge thanks to my family for all of their support and for tolerating the long hours I spend in my office, clicking away on the keyboard.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Thanks in advance to my readers for understanding that while most locations in this book are real and worth a visit, others are purely fictional.
Please excuse my taking liberties with certain procedures of the New Orleans Police Department. Those officers have a tough job that few of us would want. I have nothing but good wishes for police officers in the city of New Orleans.
CHAPTER ONE
Funny, that a concerned friend would ask me to come and look at a couple of dead bodies in an effort to cheer me up. Maybe not cheer me up, exactly; maybe Honey wanted to distract me, get my mind engaged in something other than bruising guilt over having recently killed a guy in my fight-cage ring. That it had been unintended, during what was supposed to have been a friendly sparring session, was of no solace to the dead fighter. But unlike my dead mixed-martial arts opponent, the two dead men here in a grubby parking lot surrounded by CSI techs and crime-scene tape were both very intentionally dead, most likely at the hands of a third party, despite New Orleans Police Homicide Detective Honey Baybee’s assertion that this was a probable murder / suicide.
The black guy, the one in the high-gloss white Mercedes S550 with fancy rims, was thirtyish and had the kind of GQ looks that suggested a certain pampering, and I’m not talking about by Mama.
“Pretty Boy here was definitely killed in the car,” I told my friend Honey. “Nice manicure.”
“Ty Parks,” said Honey, wearing latex gloves as she rifled the guy’s wallet. “Same address as the other victim. Gay lovers, I figure.”
I’d seen bloodier car interiors, but I wouldn’t want the clean-up job. “Plays havoc with the resale value.”
“What?”
“New headliner, new seats. Pull the pieces of skull out of the leather trim. Still, you run a CARFAX on this vehicle, what will come up? ‘Never been in an accident but a guy got his brains blown out in the passenger seat.’ Is that a selling point?”
Honey knew how to ignore me better than most. I think she took comfort from the fact I was being my usual wiseass self. Since I didn’t want her worrying, I worked hard to generate my customary patter and mask my deep funk while pretending nothing was wrong with me. But there was a lot wrong with me, and it was only partially due to the fact that my adopted city was still largely in ruins, one year after a Cat 5 hurricane had nearly wiped us out.
“They both worked at Michoud. Both stiffs.”
“Security clearances?” I asked.
“Not sure. They do secret stuff at Michoud?”
“It’s a federal facility, part of NASA. They were known as being the external tank p
eople for the space shuttles, back when the shuttle program was still sending people and things into space. Who knows what they do at Michoud now?” I checked out Ty’s gold diamond ring, thick gold chain bracelet, Kenneth Cole brogues. “This guy is pretty tricked-out for a civil servant punching a clock.”
“So is his buddy, Del Breaux. Fifty-three years old.”
I’d been leaning into the front seat area, and backed off to straighten up. “Sugar daddy, you think?” I used the sleeve of my Polo shirt to mop the sweat that had beaded up on my forehead. At 8:19 in the morning it was already ninety degrees with a humidity to match. It’s why the smart tourists stayed away in summer; tourists staying away was maybe the only good thing about August in the Delta. We were still shaded here in the parking lot, otherwise the corpses might be puffier than Anthony Bourdain after a night of binge drinking tequila shooters.
“Breaux has some sort of business downtown. On Poydras.” Honey read from a business card extracted from a second wallet. Breaux’s personal effects—keys, cell phone, cigarette case—were secured in plastic evidence bags. “Breaux Enterprises, One Shell Square, Forty-ninth floor.”
I glanced over at Breaux, an older white male sprawled supine about twenty-five feet away, getting photographed by a squirrelly crime scene tech who kept whispering, “Say cheese,” before each snap.
“Forty-ninth floor is almost the penthouse. That’s some pricey high-rise real estate.” I circled the car, checking for abnormalities. “This is a brand-new hundred-thousand-dollar ride. Let me guess: it’s registered to Breaux Enterprises.”
Honey nodded. “Leased.”
“Luxury, fine German engineering, and a look that says to everybody else, ‘I’ve got it, you don’t, so kiss my butt.’” I checked out the Michoud decal on the driver’s side of the windshield. “So Breaux works at Michoud, but he’s also a business tycoon?”
“Does anyone in New Orleans not have a scam on the side?”
“Speaking of that… you sure the chief okayed me being here?” Chief Pointer and I had a long history, none of it good, dating back to when I had been an NOPD cop. I’d been doing pretty well as a private investigator since resigning from the department almost exactly a year ago, but I couldn’t imagine the chief wanted any part of me.
“He agreed you act as an unpaid consultant. Attached to the Homicide Section, to me, specifically. I made him put it in writing. Said you’d never believe me if he didn’t.” Honey handed me a signed sheet on the chief’s letterhead.
I scanned the document authorizing me, Cliff Saint James, to officially assist Honey. “This from the guy who’d like to sauté my liver with some onions?”
“You read the papers. We’re the murder capital of the planet and he’s fighting for his job. He knows you’re good and loves the nice headlines I’ve brought the department. We deliver a couple of high profile arrests? He might make it to the end of the year. Keep the letter, you’ll need it.”
“I can’t believe you went all the way to Pointer to get me aboard,” I said, crossing toward the body of Del Breaux.
“The average homicide dick is working twenty-three cases. I’m lucky: I only have seventeen murders on my plate,” she said following, as she made a notation in her pocket notebook.
Honey wasn’t the kind of friend who ever asked for much, so when she called me this morning and asked for my help, almost pleading with me, there was no way I could refuse her. I’d assumed she was pretending to need my assistance because she felt concerned about me. But now, as I looked at the corpses, I couldn’t be sure about that; this was a rather sophisticated crime scene. Ultimately, it didn’t matter, I simply had to spring myself from a self-imposed isolation and come out to help her if I could, regardless of her motivations. That was fine, even though I would prefer to be buried in my couch, feeling sorry for myself, and avoiding all contact with the outside world.
Actually, I’d do just about anything for Honey, but since Chief Pointer had personally derailed my career as an NOPD cop, solving murders to help prolong his reign was almost too much to bear. Especially on a brutally hot Hurricane Season morning, with Del Breaux lying in a thickening pool of blood and other fluids, the flies already starting to tuck in.
“Well, detective, I’ll give you my best shot. Maybe we can grab some good press. The gay angle will help. And you got a double murder here; this is no murder / suicide. The Times-Picayune gives double murders more ink.”
“How you figure this for a two-bagger?”
“If this was murder / suicide, then it’d be a crime of passion. Rich old Mister Del here is not going to drive his high-priced ride over to Shit Street for a love-life meltdown. And I don’t buy the idea that he shoots his squeeze in the car, then gets out and walks over here. To do what, deliver a soliloquy to the wall? To get a better cell signal? And look around; I don’t see much in the way of lights or security cams here.”
“That’s not unusual in this city.”
“Granted, but this would make a good place for a secret meet,” I said, slipping on a pair of latex gloves. “We’re surrounded by two-story brick walls with no windows.”
The bodies had been found by two location scouts on contract to a Hollywood film production. I hadn’t asked, but I wondered if the movie script had called for a gritty place to shoot a drug buy. We stood on crumbling black asphalt in a boxed-in rear parking lot to a defunct bakery warehouse in a neighborhood where it was easier to find crack than a loaf of bread.
The city was full of such locales, but this parking lot could make a list of Top Ten Scuzzy Places: rusted-out car bodies sat useless with nothing valuable left to strip; rats rooted through piles of stale and fresh garbage; a blood-stained mattress soggy from recent rains smelled of mildew and worse; thousands of broken glass shards from cheap booze bottles speckled the faded blacktop; third-rate busted-up furniture teetered in piles where it had been arbitrarily dumped; and the caustic stench of urine insistently impinged on the sense of smell like an itch that wouldn’t go away.
If those film boys hadn’t stumbled on the crime scene and called it in to PD, I figured the friendly locals would have already helped themselves to little things like the car, wallets, cell phones, jewelry and maybe even the shoes of the deceased.
“Crack dealers work the corner, but I don’t think we’re looking at a drug buy gone bad,” I told Honey. “These boys weren’t crackheads; they were too in love with themselves for that.”
“I had uniforms talk to those dealers. But you know how that goes.”
“‘Don’t know nuthin’, ummm, didn’t see nuthin’,’” I said, using my best thug impression, then squatted down next to the second corpse, who had a better blond dye job than a lot of Uptown ladies I’d known carnally. A 9mm Steyr M9 sat inches from the outstretched right hand. Like Ty Parks—the stiff in the car—Del Breaux’s appearance just screamed well-heeled metrosexual: his IWC watch had to be worth close to ten grand. Its gold face matched the gold color of his hand-made linen shirt, and I doubted that was an accident. He probably had expensive watches with different face colors to match different outfits. I checked his Armani belt, Mizani raw silk slacks. I gingerly checked out the Bally loafers then moved up the body. Breaux’s hands were soft, skin maybe a little too tight around the eyes for a guy in his fifties, unless you’ve been under the scalpel. Whatever the case, Breaux and Parks were simply immaculately dressed, in what I guess they call “casual chic.”
For me casual chic was a pair of pressed, khaki-colored, 5-11 Tactical pants with hidden, inside-the-waist pouches for black anodized handcuffs, my sub-compact Glock 36, and an extra magazine. Not to mention the extra cargo pockets to accommodate the knives I always carried, plus all the electronic gadgets. I was a gadget guy, pure and simple. I liked tools and having them handy.
Which meant my concealed digital video cam was recording everything I said, saw, and heard. I’d found memory to be too fallible and impeachable, especially in court.
Hunches stand o
n shaky legal footing as well, but I’d come to honor them. And I suddenly had the nagging suspicion that a guy like Del Breaux wouldn’t own a scratched-up, Steyr M9, kind of a clunky-looking, poor man’s Glock. The Steyr is a perfectly fine weapon, mind you, sold at a nice price point; I’d shot one at a range. But the M9 didn’t strike me as being fancy enough for this guy. He’d have some pricey SIG SAUER or HK or any number of other semi-auto handguns that cost three or more times what the Steyr went for and that held a haughtier cachet. Again, just a hunch, but since I’d already concluded Mr. Del was murdered, the gun probably would prove to be untraceable.
Honey bowed her head slightly as she rubbed her eyes. Murder / suicide was a neat and tidy package, but now, if I were correct, she was looking at having nineteen homicides on her plate. She looked tired most of the time since leaving the joy of eight-hour shifts as a patrol officer and joining homicide, where she was on call 24/7. Eighteen-hour days were now the rule, not that she could get any kind of a normal night’s sleep. Her thirty-year-old baby blue eyes had lost some sparkle and her freckly skin was paler than normal. But she still had the sexiest blond French braid in the state—she wore it that way in case she got called out for a SWAT op—and kept the same slightly muscular but still feminine physique. Most officers thought her father must have been a sadist to have saddled his daughter with a name that sounded like a Bourbon Street stripper, and the lifetime of teasing and mocking that resulted had toughened her into a serious hardcase who knew how to fight and wasn’t afraid to throw a punch. She was rock solid and held her own weight on the SWAT team. I was happy for her because her career was taking off, but I missed all the time we used to spend together.
