by Ed Kovacs
Breaux must have been sitting on the toilet, using the laptop before he and Parks went out for the last ride of their lives.
I tried to boot up the computer but naturally it was password-protected. This case was quickly shaping up to be the biggest I’d ever worked on. The presence of the real FBI, or whatever three-letter agency should be responding to the murders, had to be imminent. Meaning Honey and I would get dumped from the investigation and the laptop would disappear from scrutiny once the feds got their hands on it.
Unless I didn’t tell Honey I found it.
There was another reason not to tell Honey, not just yet anyway: the NOPD Crime Lab. Demolished by the Storm, they were working their way back, but they had a huge backlog, were understaffed, and I wouldn’t trust them with something this sensitive.
Actually, there was a lot I wouldn’t trust them with. On the other hand, I knew exactly whom I could trust.
I instinctively knew the laptop to be a major key to unlocking the case. If I was going to help Honey solve these murders I needed to throw the rule book out the window and keep the laptop under wraps until I could divine its secrets. It’s a risk Honey could never take because she had a career with the department; I, however, didn’t have too much to lose. At worst I figured I could get arrested for tampering with evidence or theft or whatever charge the feds would want to nail me with. If I got caught. And getting caught wouldn’t be good for Honey since she had brought me in, but her career would survive. I could take the heat if it came to that; it was worth the risk.
I simply had to make sure I didn’t get caught.
And if there was damning evidence in the laptop necessary to prove some malfeasance in a future prosecution then I’d have to fudge the chain-of-evidence issue. Once I’d obtained the secrets within, I could return and plant the computer elsewhere in the house. I could use the excuse of needing to look for more listening devices, magically recover the laptop from an as-yet-to-be-determined hiding place, and log it into evidence control. And then if the feds grabbed it, so what?
It was all a bit devious, but that was nothing new to my modus operandi. The plan would work.
A loud rapping on the door snapped me out of my ruminations.
“Saint James, you in there?”
It was Honey.
“There are nine bathrooms in this house. Can’t a guy get a little privacy?” I silently slipped Del Breaux’s government-issued laptop into my backpack. There would be no going back now. I took a final look in the mirror before opening the door, hoping I had made the right choice.
The gut check hit me as soon as I opened the door. Two men in dark gray suits stood bookending Honey looking like they’d just been informed their wives had given them a dose of the clap.
“Saint James. Special Agents Gibbs and Minniear. Counterintelligence agents from D.C.” said Honey with a distinct lack of warmth. They were both big men in their late thirties and drilled me with the kind of stares loss-prevention agents give to shoplifters. They didn’t offer to shake hands, so I just nodded.
“What about the laptop?” asked Gibbs, who seemed to be in charge.
Did he know? How could he?
“What about it?”
“Did it turn up here on the second floor?” Minniear practically snapped.
My gut eased a bit. “Seems to me it must have either been in Breaux’s office or his car. Makes sense that whoever capped him grabbed the laptop. I’m thinking he was killed specifically for the computer.”
Looking even less pleased, Agent Gibbs fished out his cell phone and walked off as he dialed a call, followed by Agent Minniear. Honey and I exchanged glances and waited until they were out of earshot.
“Have they taken over the case?” I asked.
“Just looking over our shoulders, for now.” She glanced over to them, and then looked back to me. “Anything turn up?”
“It’s a big house, let’s keep looking.”
I stuck around for a couple more hours helping search the house. Once the FBI boys left, I used an excuse to bug out that startled Honey and left her speechless: I told her I needed to go to a church service.
And I wasn’t lying.
The Divine Trinity Church of Blessed Union on St. Claude had been making a steady comeback since the Storm had damaged the structure and sent much of the congregation into Hurricane Exile. In the immediate bleak months after the killer hurricane, the pastor had delivered his sermons from under the roll-out awning of a borrowed RV in the parking lot as attendees sat in lawn chairs, on milk crates, or in their cars with the doors open and windows down as they fanned themselves. The church-goers had formed working groups and in every second of spare time they labored to bring each other’s homes into livable condition while at the same time facilitating repairs to the church itself. If you were looking for some folks with indomitable spirits, this was a pretty good place to start.
Tonight the parking lot stood half full as testament to the city’s greatly reduced population; before the Storm, overflow parking filled nearby empty lots. I knew that about two-thirds of the way through the service the deacons would meet up in the foyer just before they passed the donation plates. So I stood in the dimly lit vestibule next to a table where four donation plates were stacked on top of each other and listened as the small choir backed by a four-piece band finished a rocking gospel number. The pastor then picked up the thread of this evening’s theme: forgiveness. He said we needed to forgive the government for failing us, to forgive our neighbors for stealing from us, to forgive God for sending the Storm, and most importantly to forgive ourselves, for surely we must have done something to deserve having gotten into such a tough pickle. The pastor was asking a lot.
I watched as three men—deacons—rose from the pews and quietly made their way back toward the foyer. I removed a lucky two-dollar bill decorated with a red Magic Marker from my wallet and placed it in the top donation plate, then faded into the shadows. The greenback had been the only money I’d had on me the night Kerry Broussard and I first met, and we’d since used it as a secret signaling device. As head deacon, Kerry would be picking up that top plate.
Halfway through my second mini-cigarillo as heat lightning stabbed a charcoal ash sky and muted chords from the church organ hung in the air, Kerry found me in the parking lot. He was an old friend and maybe the best crime-lab tech in the state. We’d been fishing buddies for years and he had unofficially helped me countless times with lab results on sensitive evidence. I felt a little bad about ambushing him during an early evening church service, but I knew he wouldn’t mind.
“Cliff—” He’d come up behind me and as I turned he put a big hand on my shoulder. “How’s it going? You okay?”
He was asking about Bobby Perdue.
“I’m trying to stay busy.”
“Why don’t you come in for the rest of the service? If you want, have a chat with the pastor afterwards. Then over to the house for late supper. You haven’t seen the kids in a while now. Charlene was asking me about you the other night, said we needed to have you over.”
“Please give me a rain check. I’m on a murder case, Kerry. That’s why I’m here. Sorry to interrupt like this, but, time is working against me.”
“You know I’ll do whatever I can.”
“Don’t say that too quick; you may not want to do this one. But if you agree, this has to stay secret. I mean, you can’t let anyone know you’re working on this. Period.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe they won’t figure out the past connection between you and me.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
I wondered that myself. “I’m not sure.”
I gently guided Kerry over to his minivan where we stood out of view.
“You’re in trouble,” he said, looking me over.
“Not yet. But I figure soon.”
Kerry broke out in a big toothy smile and shook his head. “Cliff Cliff Cliff. When you gonna learn?”
“You know ho
w it is.”
“Don’t I, though. You being watched?”
“No. Right now I’m just being careful. I don’t know how things might play out. It’s why I didn’t call you and why you can’t call me for the foreseeable future. I’m now having second thoughts about even giving this to you.”
“You’re trying to solve a murder?”
“Double murder. Powerful forces might be involved.” I showed him the DoD laptop. “Password protected. I need the password. You’d have to do it in a way that couldn’t be traced to you.”
Kerry took a breath and exhaled slowly. “Then we do it on the down-low, same as we always do.” He took the laptop, opened the side door of the van, and slipped it under the rear seat.
“Maybe a lot lower than we always do. How long do you need?”
“I’m swamped with work right now. I’ll need to take extra precautions—better give me two days.”
I checked my TechnoMarine chronograph. “Let’s call it seven A.M., Wednesday morning. Puccino’s out on Vets in Metairie. Caramel macchiatos on me.”
Kerry nodded.
“You haven’t seen me and we haven’t spoken. And if for some reason I don’t show up for coffee, don’t try to contact me. Hide the laptop somewhere, but not at your home or office. It’ll probably be nothing, just a sign that things are getting sticky.”
Thanks to the continuing post-Storm real estate bubble that applied to undamaged structures, I’d sold my French Quarter condo for a small fortune, allowing me to buy a fixer-upper three-story brick building in the Warehouse Arts District a couple doors down from Ernst Cafe. It’s a good thing the second floor was already livable since I hadn’t done much in the way of fixing up. In fact, I hadn’t even unpacked, really, since move-in day had been the day after I killed Bobby Perdue. The only work I had done was all security related and I’d contracted it out: expensive alarms and video surveillance got installed, a safe room and hidden storage constructed, a secret entry / exit passage secured, and extra heavy-duty locks put in. I’d made the place impregnable as possible, but with a covert way out if I had to turn tail. I tried not to think about how the psychology behind those renovations reflected upon my mental state.
So my open-plan loft, which should have served as a cool bachelor hang to impress females like Honey, instead resembled a trashed-out stockroom with a few sticks of furniture thrown in. But there was streaming jazz on my laptop, Grey Goose in the Sub-Zero freezer. Honey had dropped in moments earlier at 11 PM after finishing up with the autopsies, and she pretended not to notice we were drinking out of paper cups because I hadn’t unpacked my kitchen stuff yet.
“Nice place,” she said, looking around as she took a healthy taste. This was the first time Honey had seen the new digs. Nobody had seen it since I hadn’t been in the mood for company.
“Thanks, I—I need to get this stuff unpacked, I guess. I had a key made for you, it’s around here somewhere.” I sat on the leather couch and she joined me.
Honey and I had an unusual relationship; we possessed an intimacy that had never gone sexual, but we often flirted with doing so. We loved each other and were best friends but were both damaged goods, possibly damaged beyond repair to any kind of normalcy.
“Our timeline is good. Coroner figures time of death at about two in the morning.”
“Any revelations?”
She shook her head. “Have to see if toxicology comes back with anything.”
“That will take a while.”
“Yeah. And the chief wants the case wrapped yesterday,” said Honey.
“What I can’t figure is the two and a half million. Even the super-rich don’t keep that kind of cash on hand.”
“If he was selling the laptop secrets and was killed during the exchange? How did the money get in his house?” she asked.
“Could he have had more than one thing to sell? He’s worked in black projects for decades. Maybe he recently sold something for the bag of cash, then last night he was going to sell something else, but the deal went bad.”
“Aside from murder, we’re talking espionage. Foreign-intelligence-agents kind of thing,” Honey said frowning. The last thing she needed was a twisted, complex case full of pitfalls, politics and jurisdictional issues.
“Yes we are. Remember, that bug in Breaux’s house didn’t turn out to be his own. Somebody was spying on Breaux. And Salerno, the Michoud security guy pretty much hinted that Breaux and Parks were being investigated.”
“Think the bug was planted by Salerno?”
“Possibly.”
“So whatever Salerno’s investigating Breaux and Parks for ends up killing them?” Honey took another sip of vodka. “Or was it related to Breaux’s trading company work?”
“We need to learn more about Breaux’s company,” I said. “Any other workers at Breaux Enterprises, or was he a one-man-band?”
“One personal assistant.” Honey fished a pocket notebook from her purse. “Peter Danforth. Building security kind of hinted that he was light in the loafers, too.”
“So where is Peter Danforth?”
“That will have to wait until tomorrow.” Honey threw back her drink, scooted over on the sofa, wrapped her arms around me, and held me close like she had a hundred times before. But this time I think she wasn’t doing it for her, she was doing it for me. “Will you teach me kickboxing?” she murmured, just above a whisper.
Nothing like getting cozy with a beautiful woman who then brings up a super-violent pastime, but it was one of the reasons I loved Honey. And I loved her even more because I knew she was baiting me into getting back on the horse. I had offered many times to teach her kickboxing, but now that I was avoiding my dojo, she suddenly wanted to learn.
What could I do but turn the tables? “Tomorrow. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”
She searched my eyes in a way that made me feel like she was evaluating my inner condition and forming a silent diagnosis as to my mental state. I did my best to hold her gaze.
“Everything is so different now. I’ve hardly seen you the last couple months.”
“You’re a rising star in the department. I’m really proud of you,” I said earnestly.
“Other things are more important than that.”
I laced the fingers of my right hand through hers. “Yes they are. I—” My eyes lowered to our interlocked hands. I wanted to tell her how I really felt, to talk about the demons I currently wrestled with, to let her know how I missed our games of chess and the quiet moments we’d shared together, how I missed holding her at night and the narcotic scent of her perfume carrying me to other worlds that gave me peace and comfort. I wanted her to understand that I would climb out of this mental sinkhole and be the old St. James again, that if she could just give me some time, I would make her laugh again and carp at me with her clipped banter that rang as a focused counterpoint to my more unbridled thought processes. I wanted to tell her that my heart hurt and that I needed her. But all I could manage was, “I have your favorite shampoo in the shower.”
Maybe she understood. She squeezed my hand, laid her head on my chest. I held onto her like a good thought, one I didn’t want to fade from my consciousness. I held her as if she were the fleeting answer to expunging the misery of my guilt and suffering. The fact that I was allowing her into my space at all made me realize what a fool I’d been in keeping her at arms length since the death of Bobby Perdue.
CHAPTER FOUR
At first light I jogged over to the St. Charles Avenue neutral grounds—the wide, grassy median strip between the traffic lanes—on the other side of Calliope Street, pronounced “KAL-ee-ope” not “Ka-LIE-o-pee” because people down here did things differently, so get used to it. This section wasn’t even officially named Calliope Street anymore, the city council had changed it for no good reason back in the 1990s, and I figured in another thirty years locals might start using the new name, whatever it was. Like most folks around here, I’d simply ignored the name change.
I currently had been ignoring a lot of things, and presently was half-assing it; instead of what used to be my serious, mega-mile run on asphalt at Audubon Park, I’d be trotting on damp grass as I leisurely headed uptown and stopped for cross-traffic. I could try and fool myself into thinking I was starting to get my act together, but really I’d simply been unable to sleep after Honey left at 5 AM. I got tired of staring at all the unpacked boxes in my loft so I forced myself to attempt a return to my usual routine. Maybe this lame jog was still a step in the right direction, and I deeply inhaled the dew-fresh dampness of the lush greenery as I trotted.
The city’s neutral grounds on streets such as St. Charles, Esplanade, Carrollton and Napoleon, were finally getting back to pre-Storm shape, largely thanks to ad hoc groups of local volunteers who got tired of waiting for the city to do what cities are supposed to do and took it upon themselves to remove trash and debris and downed tree limbs from the green expanses. As bad as things still were, it would be hard to imagine the condition New Orleans would be in were it not for the volunteers, some local but mostly from out-of-state—church organizations, student groups, sister-city programs—who continued to flood the Gulf Coast bestowing goodwill and hard work.
The mayor and his administration tried to take credit for all progress, but they possibly ranked as the most inept and inefficient group of spoiled egotists who ever held power. FEMA waited to disperse tens of millions of dollars to the city for myriad recovery projects, but the mayor and his staff acted like they couldn’t be bothered to present the properly written proposals that would get the money released. The mayor simply wanted it handed to him, so he screamed and whined, playing the blame game in TV sound bites, pointing his finger at the governor, the feds, the president—anyone but himself and his incompetent lackeys. So The People, as usual, were the ones who suffered thanks to the city / FEMA standoff.
