by Ed Kovacs
The scent of a cigarette stopped me cold. No, check that, not of a cigarette, but of a heavy smoker. It didn’t smell like someone had lit up in my loft; that was a very distinct aroma. It smelled like the stink of smoke on someone’s clothing. I stood in my kitchen, polo shirt soaked with sweat, about to reach for a bottle of water in the fridge. I’m a cigar smoker, but never in my home. A cigarette smoker leaves a distinctly different airborne marker. And since I don’t run the air-conditioning in the huge loft when I’m out, no air currents had disturbed the wafting aroma. I had a very good nose. A smoker was in my house.
I pulled my big semi-auto. I carried the 1911A cocked and locked, so I eased off the safety to condition zero.
Since I wasn’t sure if Fred Gaudet and the other detectives had rolled up the entire surveillance team, and since the bad guys had already cased my place, I hadn’t wanted to publicly announce my return home. So I’d parked a few blocks away, then gone into Ernst Cafe. I had a key for the door to the stairway that led to the roof, a key I’d made myself after disassembling the lock early one morning when no one was around. With an iced sweet tea in hand and no one looking, I had easily unlocked the door on the first floor of Ernst, entered the stairway, and emerged on the rooftop.
Unless my loft was under surveillance from some high vantage point, which I doubted, I wouldn’t be spotted. In less than a minute I had made it to my roof and unlocked my heavy-duty, alarmed, steel rooftop door.
That was moments ago, and now I stood perfectly still, .45 in one hand, smart phone in the other, as I logged on to the Internet and accessed the security system in my house. Using the phone, I was able to perform a fast rewind of the digital video that had been recorded by the interior and exterior security cameras. The cell-phone screen showed a lone male figure dressed as a UPS driver enter right through the front door on the street. He had to be a top-flight operator to have gotten by the alarms. Brown baseball cap, wrap-around mirrored sunglasses, and a blond beard that was probably a fake masked his features.
I watched the intruder on video enter my upstairs loft. He seemed perplexed by all of the boxes stacked everywhere, but in short order went to work installing something in my Sub-Zero refrigerator. It was something that didn’t need refrigeration, about as big as a notebook computer but with a shape resembling a butterfly.
A bomb. Unusual-looking, but a bomb.
Maybe there wasn’t anyone else here after all. Only me. And the butterfly bomb. Mentally I scratched the idea of moving Honey and her mom into my loft.
I logged off the Internet and carefully retraced my steps. The sweet tea I’d left at the top of Ernst Cafe’s stairway was still cold, and I chugged it. I didn’t care one whit that I startled a waitress carrying a drink tray when I came out of the stairway door on the ground floor of the bar. I held a finger to my lips, put a twenty-dollar bill in her hand, picked up one of the real drinks from her tray, and walked out.
So much for the theory of the bad guys hurting someone close to us to get us to back off. Honey and I now had contracts on our heads.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I sat with my back against the wall in the pool table room at Dos Jefes Uptown Cigar Bar. I needed something stronger than a cigarillo and was puffing a Honduran maduro torpedo from the bar’s large humidor. Lieutenant Eric Mondrian, supposedly NOPD’s former CIA liaison, sat across from me finishing a call on his cell. He terminated the call and then took a long pull on a black-and-tan.
“Good news and bad news. Good news is, the bomb didn’t go boom. Your building is unscathed. Bad news is, the bomb squad boys had to cut through both sides of your fancy refrigerator.”
“What was the explosive?”
“They think it’s some kind of advanced landmine.”
“Landmine?”
He nodded.
“Let me guess—a prototype,” I said.
“Yeah, they texted me a photo.”
Mondrian handed me his cell phone showing the contents of my fridge: a jar of Dijon mustard, a quarter bottle of Piper-Heidsieck Brut, and a landmine. As he hurriedly took another quaff, I used Bluetooth to copy the photo to my cell. The landmine resembled some kind of plastic, olive drab butterfly.
“I got some other good news, some strange news, and some more bad news.”
“Give me the strange news,” I said.
“The bomb wasn’t rigged to explode.”
I studied his face as I thought about that. “A real bomb but not armed. So they’re sending me a message, after all.”
“Not necessarily. Maybe the perp knew you were coming back and had to beat feet before he could rig it.”
“He didn’t know I was coming back.”
“According to your security video, you only missed him by five minutes. They probably had people watching you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Don’t be so sure. Cockiness can be terminal.”
He was right about that. “What’s the good news?”
“The Agency wants you alive and kicking.”
“Bullshit.”
“Bless you. I’m just the messenger. I thought you had some bad blood with them, but they say no.”
“You know how it is, you’re just another no-good jerk—until they need you. I can’t take anything the CIA does around here too seriously.”
“Well, here’s the bad news: a Chinese hit team. You’re the target. I was told the local spooks rolled them up at the airport when they got off a commercial flight out at Louis Armstrong. They were carrying what appeared to be some exotic poisons, okay? So to be brutally honest, the reason I’m guzzling my drink is because I don’t want to be near you right now. Is that serious enough for you?”
“Twee Siu’s still the CIA station chief, right? She tell you all this?” I had a pretty intense history with Twee Siu. I trusted her as far as I could throw a brick.
“Shut up and listen.” Mondrian slid a house key toward me on the table. “Here’s the key to a safe house, the location of which I’m told you already know. I was also told you seldom need a key to get in anywhere, but what the hell, give your lock picks a day off. Stay away from your dojo, your home, Pravda, and your friends, including Detective Baybee. There’s a black Suburban parked over on Annunciation. Armored. Weapons in a case in back.” He slid a Chevy key toward me. “The Agency folks are looking for the local contact the hit team would have rendezvoused with.”
“Tan Chu and Ding Tong. I can give you the address in Harahan.”
“But actually that’s secondary, because the other hit team, I’m told, is more problematic.”
“Other team?”
“Russian. Just what did you do to piss these people off, anyway?”
“Beats me.”
“If I were you, I’d take a long vacation. But since I know you won’t, just make sure you shoot straight and have enough ammo.”
“What’s being done for Detective Baybee?”
“The contract is on you, not her.”
“Negative. They broke into her house, took pictures, planted bugs—”
“That was FBI CI-3, not a wet team. They’re unhappy with you guys, but they won’t kill you. Of course, after the way you had their surveillance team detained, maybe they will come for you.”
“That surveillance team was not FBI.”
“Technically that’s true. They’re CI-3 assets. Private contractors, not sworn agents. You didn’t know the FBI uses a shitload of contractors?”
“I don’t appreciate the distinction. CI-3 is not on our side. They’re in bed with some very bad people.”
“Saint James, don’t be a complete idiot; at least try to keep it to a part-time basis. The CI-3 people like to catch spies, which is a good thing. They got families, mortgages, credit-card debt. So you think maybe they have to obey orders and sometimes do things they don’t like to do? Like babysit Tan Chu?”
“If they mess with somebody’s family, they need to be slapped.”
“I won’t
argue that point, I’m just suggesting you temper your judgment of them.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.” I slid the keys back to him. “Tell Twee I need to see her. Immediately, if not sooner.”
I stood and took a few steps toward the side door.
“You might have been clocked coming in here. Go out the other side, onto the patio. Jump the fence, cut through some yards, and stay off Tchoupitoulas.”
“You trying to make me paranoid, Eric?”
“Far be it from me to do that, just because people are trying to kill your ass.”
“Assign some more coppers to Honey. Good people. Can you do that?”
“I’ll make it happen. I’d offer you a protective detail, but I know you won’t take it.”
I exhaled bluish smoke and set the torpedo butt in an ashtray. “I’d feel bad if somebody got hurt. But I want to talk to Twee, face-to-face.”
I rented an armored white GMC Yukon from Billy Burke who runs PSD details for Hollywood celebs when they’re in town on a production or come slumming for dirty long weekends. I had an Omni parking valet retrieve my Bronco from the street near Ernst Cafe and take it back to the hotel garage.
Honey and I had spoken on our encrypted cells as I took a spin on I-10 and we quickly filled each other in, keeping the call short in case someone was tracking my signal. She’d seized all the shipping records from TDF and had been trying to sort through them at her desk on Broad Street when the two main FBI CI-3 boys showed up. Her daily briefing to them consisted of three screamed words: “Kiss my ass!” She knocked one of them down with a hard right and other detectives jumped in to restrain her as she went after the second FBI agent. She told them in no uncertain terms what she would do if they ever broke into her house or talked to her mother again. I so wished I had it on video.
After heading back into the city, I retrieved the GIDEON sample from where I’d stashed it in the abandoned warehouse, then drove to Scrap Brothers’ closed yard and hid it among tons of assorted scrap-metal items. Breaux’s laptop had already been hidden safely away in a false wall at Pravda after I’d copied all the files the morning I’d seen Kerry Broussard.
I had Kendall retrieve a shopping list of items I might need from the Bronco. He used my circuitous passages out of the Omni Hotel to make sure he wasn’t followed, and he then joined me at Scrap Brothers. Since the yard was out of business for the foreseeable future, it seemed as good a place as any to lie low. At least I knew the air-con ran cold.
I remembered the bottle of cheap brandy next to the old phone book and poured myself half a tumbler as Kendall watched. I sat down with my feet up on an old steel desk.
“That rotgut gonna rot your brain and your gut, Coach.”
I inwardly cringed at “Coach,” embarrassed that I’d stopped being a role model for Kendall or anybody else. “You got that right,” I said. I pushed the drink away from me.
We sat there in silence and my mind wandered. I thought about Del Breaux. Each member of the Buyer’s Club—Clayton Brandt, Nassir Haddad, Grigory Pelkov, and Tan Chu—had his reasons to want Breaux dead, plus the manpower and resources to make it happen. And as Breaux’s lover and confidant, it made sense that Ty Parks would have been taken out, too. Alibis meant nothing since these principal suspects would not have been at the crime scene, but would have been very visible elsewhere.
Then there was Danforth. How convenient to have an out-of-town alibi. But if he were so frightened, why even return to New Orleans? I’d found him rather easily. Why couldn’t the Buyer’s Club do the same, if they wanted to? Or the feds? If Pelkov would kill over shorted merchandise, then he’d have to kill Danforth as well as Breaux. Perhaps Danforth had indeed been located, but the killers were waiting for the right opportunity to do their worst.
Then add the murders of Leroy and Jimmy Jefferson and their employee Herbert into the mix. Tan Chu was the obvious suspect. Or anyone who wanted to keep the brothers from saying the wrong thing in a National Security Investigation. Someone like Clayton Brandt?
Which brought me to the sealed silver container that used to sit about fifty yards from where I now lounged. Decon had said that the container was already sealed when he came to work at Scrap Brothers about eight months ago. There had to be some extremely sensitive goods in that container. If I’d only put a GPS tracker on both containers, I might have my killers.
“Kendall, we still have signals from the GPS trackers?”
“They done stopped. Late this mornin’. I sent you a text.”
“If we don’t have the GPS signals, that means Customs must have found the ones I placed in the weapons crates, and Chu’s people found the one I put on top of the green container.”
“Chu ain’t left his warehouse since the FBI raid. He layin’ low.”
“That makes two of us. Here, take a look at this.” I took the SIM card out of my phone, then powered it up and showed him the photo I’d gotten from Mondrian. “The mine was rigged with wire to the refrigerator door, so that when I opened it—”
As Kendall studied the photo, I kept thinking about the fact that the bomb hadn’t been armed. Maybe Mondrian had been right: the bomber had to bolt before he had time to arm the device. Anyone performing even cursory due diligence would learn that I wasn’t the type of guy who backed down, so why fool around with a “message?” As to who had access to a prototype explosive not currently fielded by our military, well, I knew a whole bunch of folks who fit the bill, all of whom I had seriously pissed off in the last forty-eight hours.
“We’re playing with fire here. You want to walk away, I understand.”
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
“Maybe I should just close this whole thing down. If the feds want to sell weapons and technology and don’t care about people getting murdered, why should I? I should be worried about my own friends and not dead dirtbags like Del Breaux.” I rubbed my eyes. One of Kendall’s cousins had been killed doing surveillance for me on a case just six months ago. I didn’t want to see anything like that happen again.
Kendall stayed silent, and my mind kicked into gear again. If Eric Mondrian were to be believed, a Russian wet team was trying to make my acquaintance. A Chinese team sent by Chu, a Russian team sent by Pelkov. Which begged the question: Why would the CIA expend resources to protect me? Twee Siu, the NOLA CIA station chief and I had history—some good, some bad. We’d briefly been lovers, and I’d tracked down and brought to justice her father’s killer. I’d even saved her life. But I had also been paid handsomely for my trouble, and ultimately I’d represented a potential liability to her clandestine operations in the region. I couldn’t imagine she felt she owed me anything or cared whether I lived or died.
I kept coming back to Del Breaux’s laptop and the GIDEON sample. I had both. And suddenly, the world was coming to my door.
Maybe I looked like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, maybe he misunderstood my musings, because Kendall brought up something I’d put from my mind, at least temporarily, anyway.
“You know, I sparred with the dead man. Bobby Perdue.”
“You’re kidding,” I said surprised.
“Said he wanted to spar, and I had the L.A. fight comin’ so I needed a tune-up. You was busy on some case so I drove ’cross the lake to Slidell. Didn’t even finish round one, but I stop the show. Jaw-boned him ’bout not knowin’ how to pull a punch.”
“You stopped the round? The first round?”
“Hell yes! I didn’t go for no full-boogie fight with a heavyweight. He try to make fun a me, but I say till I seen his sorry ass fightin’ in the UFC like me, he be lucky I let him hold my towel.”
“You left the cage?”
“For sure.”
I stared at the wall behind Kendall for a long beat. “Wish I had done that.”
“No, sir. What you done be right. I had a big fight comin’. If I didn’t, I’d’a beat his pimply white ass down. Smacked him, same like you did. Don’t you know why we
all respect you, Coach? ’Cause you ain’t afraid to fuckin’ fight. Hell, you didn’t kill that boy; he killed hisself.”
Round two opened up with more of the same: wild punches from Perdue, followed up by what struck me as reckless kicks. Normally, when you throw a round kick at another body, you do it carefully, so as to minimize possible injury to yourself. With Bobby Perdue there was none of that. So I changed my strategy to aggressive checking. I’d be damned if I was going to get injured by this careless fighter. I’d always understood the difference between being hurt and being injured.
When my checking started to annoy him, he stopped with the kicks and went back to the hands. At this point, I decided to keep him away with my foot jab, in hopes I could survive the round. Quickly though, I realized how adept he was at countering my foot jabs, and then striking at strange angles.
I was getting tired of his immature game and needed to pull something out of my toolbox, but I wasn’t sure what tool it should be.
A sound in the dark startled me awake. All the lights in the Scrap Brothers office were out. My laptop screen had also gone dark. I’d been going over the computer files from Brandt’s offices and must have started drifting. Before he left, Kendall had inadvertently made me face what I was trying to duck, a judgment on my guilt or my innocence and what that meant to my life.
But right now there was nothing to think about except the location of the 1911A, because an intruder stood in the room near me. I’d set the piece on the desk top, and my fingers found the cool steel in the blackness, curling into their proper positions as I slowly raised the barrel.
The silhouette stood just inside the door and took a small quiet step forward. As my finger tightened on the trigger—
“Easy now. Hope I didn’t scare you, if you know what I mean.” A pause. “Even though I owe you one.”
The thing about falling asleep in a place where you have never slept before is that it’s easy to wake up disoriented. Especially if you wake up from being startled by a sound or a touch or maybe just a bad feeling.
