Swamp Walloper (Fight Card)

by Jack Tunney

  I couldn’t hear what Quint was saying, but I saw Tombstone’s long arm reach out from behind me and his hand pinch the back of Quint’s neck. The short, rotund detective’s hand released the woman so fast, I knew Tombstone had grabbed a pressure point and was squeezing – hard.

  The hag made a quick series of gestures with the fingers of both hands held low. Quint suddenly began gasping for breath, his hands scrabbling at his throat.

  “Be gone, Mademoiselle Charlotte,” Tombstone said, his voice a base rumble.

  The woman turned and fled.

  “Leave him be.” This came from Ward, his voice a little shaky.

  Tombstone turned his head to look at him, malevolence flowing off him, but he released Quint. The detective staggered a couple of steps and leaned against the pillar. Still struggling to catch his breath, he gave a low growl.

  “You got something to say to me?” Tombstone asked.

  “I said leave him be.” Ward was still shaky, but give the man credit, he was covering his partner and wasn’t backing down.

  “Maybe he should be on a leash,” Tombstone said. Then he turned to look at me. “You okay?”

  I nodded. Tried to tell my feet to take a step and was finally successful.

  “What did she say to you?” Quint gasped. He was beginning to stand up a little straighter.

  I smoothed my tie down, covering the tiny spot of blood seeping through my shirt. “No idea,” I said. “It all happened too fast. You know her?”

  “Crazy Adrieux,” Quint said. “She’s got two sons, Edmond and Canray, banged up in the Sauvage penitentiary for murder. Creole swamp family. Thinks she can set them free with voodoo. Always hanging round causing a scene. She should be put away.”

  I knew Tombstone had called the woman something else, but now wasn’t the time to ask.

  With Quint giving Tombstone the evil eye, we started again for the front doors of the building.

  ROUND SIX

  The NOPD had commandeered the first two floors of the building. Ward and Quint led us past the front desk, up a set of marble stairs, and on to a series of offices overlooking the front of the building. They knocked on a non-descript door, opening it when they received a grunt from inside.

  Tombstone and I trailed them into a surprisingly large space dominated by a huge carved desk. There was clutter everywhere – files, loose papers, newspapers, magazine, bulletins, a safe with the door hanging off the innards of the front lock exposed, four shotguns and six handguns that I could see, along with boxes of ammunition. There were two switchblades stuck into different walls, one pinning a sheaf of wanted posters, and the other securing a calendar featuring cheeky pin-ups. Miss August was particularly pouting and endowed.

  Surprisingly, the man behind the desk appeared to be as sartorially neat as his office was messy. He came up from behind his desk with purpose. He was a large man with a ruddy complexion, his suit a light tan, his tie a white speckled navy, his shoes buffed to an aubergine gloss. Apparently, he’d ordered his body not to perspire as his shirt was crisp and brightly white.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, taking in Tombstone with nary a twitch. “Guy Banister, Deputy Assistant Superintendent of Police – now, isn’t that a mouthful.” His voice was mellow, Southern accent soft and inviting. His hand when I shook it was as cool and sharp as his shirt.

  “Patrick Felony Flynn,” he said, smiling like a carpetbagger. “What a sweet joy it is to meet the man who took down Solomon King and Willy Stevenson. Archie Moore must be just waiting to get chopped down.” He had kept hold of my hand with both of his.

  I felt a little embarrassed. “Somehow, I don’t think Archie Moore is sweating too much over me.”

  “How is your hand?”

  “My wrist is fine.”

  “Yes, yes, your wrist.” He turned my had over as if examining it. I pulled it back firmly. I was surprised there wasn’t a suctioning sound when I finally got it loose.

  Banister turned immediately to Tombstone. “Cornell Jones,” he said knowingly, shaking Tombstone’s hand this time in the same two handed grip. “Any relation to Muskrat Jones?”

  Tombstone looked surprised. “My mother’s brother, sir,” he said.

  I was surprised by the sir.

  “Knew him well when we were growing up in Monroe,” Banister said. “Not more than half a mile separated our log cabins. He still live in Caldwell Parish?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Tombstone said. He had his hand back and the missing sir hung in the air like Quint’s missed handshake at the airport.

  Banister took no notice of the slight, but he did take in Quint’s disgruntled appearance. “John,” he said. “I know Charlotte Adrieux gets under your hide, but that was no way for a Southern gentleman to handle the situation.”

  Clearly he had seen us coming from his office windows, which overlooked the front of the building. He turned to look at Tombstone and myself. “I’m sure you have your local characters in Los Angeles,” he said. He gestured to two chairs in front of his desk. “Just move those papers and sit yourselves down.” He looked at Ward. “Wallace, would you take John and get him cleaned up, and have Eunice bring us in some ice tea and lemonade.”

  Ward and his partner didn’t like it, but they clearly knew who was in charge. Once they were gone, the expression on Banister’s face changed. He wasn’t a carpetbagger any more – he was a shark.

  “You’ll have to excuse Detective Quint. He’s heavy-handed, but he isn’t corrupt and that’s a quality hard to find around here. I understand you two would know a little about a similar situation in your own square of the woods.”

  “We do,” I said from the chair to the right side of Banister’s desk.

  “Quint is also a bit superstitious” Banister said. “How about you, Detective Jones? Did your mother ever fill you with voodoo tales?”

  “I know the tales,” Tombstone said. “They’re one reason my mother took my brother and me away from its influence.”

  “Your Uncle Muskrat was once said to be a powerful houngan.”

  Tombstone was silent.

  Banister sighed and leaned his considerable weight back in his chair. Appearing to abandon his voodoo track, he said, “I’ve got three men and a mandate to clean up a department so steeped in corruption, Carlos Marcello might as well be declared Superintendent.”

  “Marcello is your local mob boss, right?” I asked.

  Banister shot me a look. “So I’m not the only one who does his homework.”

  I shrugged.

  Banister continued. “Anything related to vice in this town gives a taste to Carlos Little Man Marcello. I’ll get him sooner or later, but right now, I have to deal with him in a much different manner than I would like.”

  I saw through the double speak. “What does he want?”

  “Edmond and Canray Adrieux out of Bayou Savauge Federal Penitentiary.”

  I wasn’t sure what this had to do with Marcus de Trod getting chomped by a gator trying to escape, or why he had my name tattooed in his armpits, but I had no doubt Banister would get there eventually. Men like him always did.

  “What’s his interest in the Adrieux brothers?” Tombstone asked. “Even if they worked for him, surely they weren’t indispensable.”

  “Marcello’s interests have taken some major setbacks since Edmond and Canray were put away for a murder the Little Man sanctioned.”

  “He sees a connection between the two situations?” I asked.

  Banister shrugged. “His health has also deteriorated. I understand these physical manifestations have been compared to the trials of Job. Charlotte Adrieux appears to have a hold on him.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “A mobster scared of a hag?”

  Banister looked at Tombstone.

  I turned my head to also look at him. The white of his eyes were very pronounced.

  “This is New Orleans,” he said.

  “Exactly,” Banister agreed. “This is New Orleans.”

 
ROUND SEVEN

  A pinched looking woman in a black skirt and buttoned up white blouse opened the door to Banister’s office breaking the odd silence that had settled over us. She held the door open for a similarly dressed younger woman with similarly pinched features. The younger woman carried a tray with two pitchers and several tall, iced, glasses. She set it on a small table against one wall.

  The older woman poured ice tea into one of the glasses and set it in front of Banister.

  “Thank you, Eunice,” he said. The woman almost cracked a smile. “Gentlemen,” Banister asked, looking at Tombstone and me.

  I looked at the younger woman who was still standing by the tray on the small side table.

  “Lemonade,” I said.

  “Same for me,” Tombstone said.

  The younger woman poured the drinks and handed one to me. She took the second glass to Tombstone, standing so far away from him she almost dropped the glass in the exchange. Tombstone smiled at her and said, “Thank you.”

  “Anything else, Superintendent Banister, sir?” Eunice asked.

  “Thank you, no.”

  The younger woman almost scurried from the room. The older woman followed more sedately, closing the door behind her, but not before we could hear her start a disciplinary barrage against her younger counterpart.

  I took a long drink of the overly sweet, but very cold lemonade. I held the glass on one of the arms of my chair. I felt the cool of the glass seep into my palm in counterpoint to the burning in my chest, which seemed to be spreading. It didn’t hurt, but it was there ...

  I was suddenly tired of the dance. “Superintendent Banister, what’s this all about?” I asked, cutting my eyes at the man who sat across the desk from me. “If Carlos Marcello wants the Adrieux brothers out, why doesn’t he just buy them out? I’m sure he’s no stranger to bribery or violence.”

  Banister steepled his fingers. It was a movement that always put me on my guard because it smacked of superiority. He appeared to be thinking, but I knew that was a ruse. Banister was a smooth operator. Anyone who had done his background work, finding out exactly who Tombstone and I were, making the arrangements to bring us into play, had already done their thinking.

  “The Bayou Sauvage is a Federal Penitentiary well outside NOPD jurisdiction and influence,” Banister said.

  “Shouldn’t stop someone like Marcello,” Tombstone said.

  “No,” Banister agreed. “But there is also the problem of Warden Lucas Trask. He grew up in those swamps and he has turned the Penitentiary into his private kingdom. He is not a man with an interest in those things Marcello is in a position to supply.”

  “What is he interested in?”

  “Fighting. You saw the state of the body of Marcus de Trod. He’d been beaten badly well before the swamp got him. His body isn’t the first to turn up on the edges of the Bayou Sauvage. Rumor has it, if a prisoner gets out of line, he’s forced to fight.”

  “Fight who?”

  Banister spread his hands across his desk. “People are too scared to say.”

  “Why doesn’t the federal government do something about Trask?” I asked.

  Banister made a face. “Why should they? The federal government likes having a hole where they can stick the worst of the worst. There are no complaints coming out of Sauvage, because nobody comes out – unless it’s like your friend.”

  “He wasn’t my friend,” I said.

  “Yet, he had your name tattooed in his armpits and you are here.”

  I was silent. Anyone who hadn’t been raised in an orphanage wouldn’t understand.

  Banister shrugged his heavy shoulders. “Lucas Trask is a hard man. Prisoners built the prison block by block. There is security – mostly members of Trask’s extended swamp family – but even if a prisoner gets out, the swamp will eat them alive.”

  “What exactly is a swamp family?” I asked.

  “There have been people living in and off this swamp for generations,” Banister said. “There are many clans, but they all align behind two main families ...”

  “Let me guess,” Tombstone said. “The Adrieuxs and the Trasks – black and white.”

  Banister nodded. “You grasp the situation.”

  “Trask does not want to let the Adrieux brothers go.”

  “They both top seven feet of murderous intent. If they are under Trask’s control, they can’t be out destroying his moonshine and gun running.”

  It was my turn to speak up. “The warden of a federal penitentiary runs moonshine and guns?”

  Banister nodded again. I had a feeling he thought he was dealing with a couple of turnips off the truck. “Trask turns his nose up at drugs. In fact, he doesn’t let them move through the swamp. Which, you can imagine, does not sit well with Carlos Marcello and the mob. He wants Trask shut down for his own reasons, but even with an army of torpedoes he’d never beat Trask’s swamp rats.”

  “Why do you care what happens to Marcello if he doesn’t get the Adrieux brothers out of Sauvage?” This came from Tombstone.

  “Because, Marcello is the devil I know. If I help him with this, he’ll give me some of what I want.”

  “And what is it you want from him?” I asked.

  “Corrupt cops. My mandate is to clean up this department, not the town.”

  Tombstone chuckled. “I hope you know to use a long spoon when you sup’ with the devil.”

  “You don’t need one if you are the devil,” Banister said.

  “What do you expect us to do about the Adrieux brothers’ situation?” I asked, tired of the posturing.

  Banister turned the full force of his gaze upon me.

  “I want you to go into the Bayou Savage Federal Penitentiary and break them out.”

  ROUND EIGHT

  We met Danny Romani at the morgue. He was the third detective assigned to the NOPD’s small Bureau of Investigation – Banister’s anti-corruption team. He was apparently working undercover, keeping clear of being seen at the criminal courts building.

  He was my height, but at the lower end of the middleweight scale, all wiry muscles and long black hair. He looked like a gypsy to my untrained eye, but in New Orleans, he could have been anything.

  The morgue was in an ancient building at the end of St. Phillip Street in what we’d been told was the French Quarter. Like so many of the other buildings we’d seen in New Orleans, the morgue was ancient. It was also supposed to be haunted – a characteristic I was also finding all too often in New Orleans.

  I was getting a definite case of the heebie-jeebies, especially as the small wound on my chest felt like it was burning hotter. I’d washed it with cold water in a bathroom, but to no avail. It didn’t exactly hurt, but I constantly knew it was there.

  Tombstone and I still hadn’t had a chance to talk. After leaving Banister’s office, Ward had driven us to the morgue and dropped us off. Ward said, he’d seen the body and didn’t need to see it again. Once he drove away, Danny Romani had approached us inside and identified himself. My head was still spinning with what Banister had proposed. I figured Tombstone was in the same boat.

  On the slab in front of us was the body of Marcus de Trod – or what remained of it after it had been savaged in the swamp. The signs of a brutal beating were obvious. I knew firsthand what the bruises from gloved punches looked like. The bruises here were magnified, deeper, wider. Whatever fists had caused these were huge, and I’d be willing to bet the gloves around them were weighted with lead.

  “Looks to me like I’ve got the easy job,” Danny said. “All I’ve got to do is let you kill me. You’ve got to go in and face whoever, or whatever, did this.” He took in the bruising on Marcus’ body with a sweep of his arm.

  I hoped I didn’t actually have to kill Danny, but Banister’s very shaky plan called for us to make it look that way the following evening in a rigged, illegal fistic encounter in a local bawdy house. I’d be arrested for murder and on my way to the big house in short order.

 
I could tell Tombstone felt the same misgivings as I did. On the surface, all the aspects of Banister’s plan tenuously connected. But plans never ran smooth, and when you’re inside a hell-hole of a prison, left to you own devises, that could get you killed.

  I looked at the tattoos in Marcus’ armpits. Probably done with pencil graphite. Marcus was a heavily haired man, but there was no hair in his armpits, which told me the tattoos were most likely done shortly before he died.

  It would have been almost impossible for Marcus to do the tattooing himself, meaning he had to trust somebody else to do the work. Only a few cons had the skills and the steady hand needed to ink tattoos with makeshift instruments, so it might be possible to discover who had done the work. The bigger question was, would that person be an ally?

  “How deep are you in Marcello’s mob?” I asked Romani.

  He looked at me with startlingly blue eyes. “They call it a krewe here. The edges. Nothing more. Hasn’t been time.”

  “You’re not from here,” Tombstone said.

  “Had family here one time, it’s why Banister brought me in to the NOPD from Chicago. Banister couldn’t trust anyone else. Had to be an outsider. Being Italian helped.”

  “Anyone else know you’re NOPD?” I asked.

  Danny shook his head, long, straight, black hair, swishing across his features. “Just Banister and Colonel Dayries, the Superintendent.”

  “How about Ward and Quint?”

  “They know I exist. I’ve never met them.”

  “How’d you make contact with Marcello’s crew?”

  “I got a job on the docks in Port Orleans. Been in the ring like you. Can handle myself as a fighter. Got in a couple of fracases on the docks. Marcello noticed. Got moved up to be one of his torpedoes. Let’s me fight on the side in his illegal bouts. Haven’t lost yet.”

  “You sure he doesn’t know what side you’re on?” Tombstone asked.