by Tim Willocks
“But we can pick a side and make ourselves worth whatever we’re worth to whoever’s willing to pay. Am I making sense?”
“You can make whatever sense you want, man, just drop this ‘we’ business.”
“Fortune favors the brave, Jack.”
“But not the stupid. Look, Rufus, I like you. You got poke, and poke’11 get you far in this life. But you haven’t put the time in on the street. You don’t appreciate the temperature down there.”
“I deal with scumbags day and night,” said Atwater, stung.
“That’s different. By the time you see them they’re surrounded by cops and steel bars.”
Atwater felt himself flushing. What Jack said was, to some extent, true. To reassure himself Atwater recalled his diligent practice in the use of firearms. Just last week he’d put five holes through a seven-inch card at thirty-five feet in six seconds. It had made his day. He’d never killed a man, it was true; or, he had to admit, even shot at one; but he could if he had to. He was prepared for it, mentally and physically. He’d kept the seven-inch card as a souvenir.
“Jack,” he said with renewed confidence. “I know I’m not a tough guy the way you and the Captain are, but there’s an angle here, a big one, I feel it. Like why the fuck would she snatch Jefferson in the first place? He must’ve had something on her, something mega.”
“That’s her problem, and if you stick around, yours too. It’s time for us to collect our paychecks and back off. Remember: no one knows we know he’s in there. If he ever gets out—and I wouldn’t put it past him—I don’t want him ever to find out we left him in there. I don’t plan on inhaling no pig shit for nobody.”
Seed clammed up and brought the Impala to a halt at a pair of elaborate wrought-iron gates set into a twelve-foot red-brick wall. A hundred yards or so beyond the gates the road ran under a leafy tunnel of live oaks and Spanish moss. Atwater got out and went to an intercom set into one of the gateposts. A pair of video cameras peered down at him from the wall. Atwater pressed the intercom.
A deep voice answered, surprisingly clear. “Identify yourself.”
It was Bobby Frechette. Atwater didn’t consider himself racist. He worked with plenty of black guys, and women too. But if he didn’t like a black person for any reason, that person, reasonably enough to Atwater’s mind, became a nigger, just like someone with no hair might become a bald cocksucker. Faggots, it had to be said, were a case unto themselves. Frechette was unquestionably a nigger, and nigger that he was, he was giving them this “Identify yourself” bullshit even though he had to be watching Atwater, whom he knew well, scowling up at the cameras.
With the Kool still in his mouth, Atwater said into the speaker, “Mr. Rufus Atwater to see Miss Parillaud.”
Frechette didn’t reply. A moment later the iron gates started to hum open, and Atwater got back into the car. As they drove without speaking underneath the arched branches of the trees, Atwater sourly pondered Jack Seed’s words. Jack was over forty and too comfortable in the life he’d made for himself. He was happy to work for tips. Atwater had to turn him. The leafy arbor above ended and the road passed through the middle of an extravagant expanse of flawlessly kept lawn.
Two white marble fountains, a rose garden and artfully placed trees and flowering shrubs decorated a wide esplanade leading up to Paril-laud’s mansion. It was called Arcadia and had been built in 1872 by Fil-more Faroe’s great-grandfather, a carpetbagger and opium addict from Baltimore, who’d swooped in during the last days of the Civil War to prey on the shattered local gentry. On Atwater’s first visit, when his mind had been swimming with visions of becoming Parillaud’s most trusted and indispensable counselor, he had been stunned by the mansion’s beauty. There was a phrase that had always appealed to him: eminence grise. Yeah, he’d dreamt of being Parillaud’s eminence grise, shaking and moving on her behalf from behind her throne, maybe even slipping her a length from time to time. Now that he knew from her manner with him that it had been an impossible fantasy, and an embarrassing one at that, he regarded the approaching mansion with the loathing of frustrated envy. They’d never find Jefferson’s secret fucking files whether he was alive or not, and even if they did, they’d never profit from them. The power the files represented would be vacuumed up by the gaping mouth of Parillaud’s wealth and he, Atwater, would be paid off, given a snotty thank-you-oh-so-much and packed off back to the City like a Mexican dishwasher after the guests have gone home.
Now Jack Seed wanted to run out on him too. Seed halted the Impala on white, evenly raked gravel outside the Palladian entrance. Atwater shoved the door open and flicked out the butt of his cigarette. From the rear of his belt he pulled off his Galco SOB pants holster with its Glock 9 mil and put it in the glove compartment. As his right foot touched the gravel, he hesitated, removed his Wayfarers and turned back to Seed.
“Jack, what if we sprang the Captain from that high-max jail?”
Seed’s eyes narrowed, flickered away for a moment, then returned to Atwater.
“I warned you about fuckin’ with rattlesnakes.”
“You virtually said it yourself, man. If he knows we left him in there, we’re high on his shitlist. But if we sprang him …”
Seed looked away again.
“A friend in need, Jack. He’d owe us.”
Seed tugged on his mustache with a finger and thumb.
“I don’t know I want him to owe us.”
Atwater squeezed Jack’s shoulder. “Think about it while I’m inside. Will you do that for me?”
Seed nodded sullenly. Atwater slammed the car door shut behind him and walked up the steps to the house. As he approached the door it was opened by Bobby Frechette. The big po-faced nigger was wearing a charcoal-gray suit that made Atwater’s look like he’d made it himself. Atwater stepped through into the hall, his shoes clicking on the marble tiles. In the thin amber light coming through the stained glass of the dome high above him the hall seemed gloomy. This was a dead place. Frechette stared at Atwater without blinking and Atwater found his own gaze focusing on the knot in Frechette’s tie. Frechette made a gesture with his hands that meant he wanted to frisk him. Normally, Atwater submitted. This time something in him rose against it.
“What kinda game you trying to play, Frechette? You know I never carry a piece.”
So far Atwater had kept his eyes on the tie. He risked a glance up at Frechette’s face: it was impassive and unperturbed. In the cast of the cheekbones was a built-in contempt that Atwater knew he would never be able to answer. He dropped his eyes again.
“Just routine, Mr. Atwater,” said Frechette, softly. “No disrespect intended.”
“I don’t care whether it was intended or not. I’m your boss’s lawyer, not a fucking hit man.”
Frechette still had his palms raised at waist height. He didn’t move. Atwater fought an urge to raise his arms and submit to the search. He nodded past Frechette.
“Okay. You go and ask Miss Parillaud if she wants me frisked. She says yes, then okay. I can wait. My time seems cheap enough around here.”
This time Frechette did blink. He scanned Atwater’s suit for bulges. And with that Atwater felt the elation of a petty but significant victory.
“Miss Parillaud’s in the study,” said Frechette, and turned to lead the way.
Atwater followed. He felt several inches taller. As he walked down the hall he reflected on how all this super-rich shit could get to a guy like himself. It was weird. On his own territory Atwater was taken seriously. He yelled at gold shields and medical examiners and precinct captains when they fucked up; in the holding cells he eyeballed killers from an inch and a half and told them how he’d guarantee them cellmates who’d fuck them in the ass till they shat blood unless they made a plea. And in the courtroom he could more than hold his own against his flabby, overpaid opponents. But the minute he stepped through the door here it fell on him like a shroud: an awestruck timidity induced by the distilled presence of sheer and outrageo
us wealth. He felt like he’d been trained from birth, without knowing it, to kneel before all that this hunk of marble, teak and gold leaf represented. A good rule of thumb among criminal lawyers declared that it was more or less impossible to pocket an after-tax income of over five hundred thousand bucks a year without knowingly breaking the law. Yet here in Arcadia, Atwater felt himself permeated with a sense of wealth’s rightness. It was as if even the walls and the floors knew that anything this rich must be right. How could this much money come together in one place and be wrong? “Be stilly” it said, “and know that I am God.”
Atwater made himself think about the tape of Parillaud sobbing and the photos, and the way he’d faced down Frechette. He managed to wrestle the awe down to manageable proportions. He wasn’t going to be pushed around anymore. Frechette had had her chance to take him into her confidence and she’d dropped the ball. All this high living, soaking her brain day and night, had made her soft and careless; Frechette too, for all his routines. Jack had proved that today with his bugs and telephoto lenses. And Atwater himself when he’d stared Frechette into dropping the body search: that could prove handy. Yeah. They were complacent. They were weak. And Rufus Atwater was honed and ready.
Frechette opened a door and spoke into the room beyond.
“Rufus Atwater, ma’am.”
“Show him in, Bobby.”
Frechette showed Atwater his cheekbones again, then stood back to let him pass. Atwater walked into the study. The louvered shutters were drawn across the windows and the room, paneled in dark woods, was dimly lit. Behind a desk the size of Atwater’s bedroom, and probably worth more than his house, stood Lenna Parillaud. She was dressed in what looked like the same black suit as in Seed’s pictures and her face was in shadow. He noted, with gratitude, that for once she wasn’t displaying much cleavage. Somewhere in the room a clock ticked. Atwater told himself not to let this Vincent Price shit get to him. He nodded at the shadowy face with what he estimated was just the right balance of respect and self-confidence.
“Miss Parillaud,” he said.
“Rufus,” she said. “Come and sit down.”
Atwater felt a slight weakness in his legs. She’d never called him by his first name before. As he walked over to the chair on this side of the table she pitched her voice over his shoulder.
“Thanks, Bobby.”
Atwater heard the door clunk shut behind him. He sat down in the chair. His hand drifted toward his pocket. He stopped it and put it in his lap.
“You may smoke if you want,” said Parillaud.
“Thanks, I’ll be fine,” said Atwater.
He crossed his legs, then wished he hadn’t, but thought it would look bad if he uncrossed them again. Parillaud stepped closer to her side of the table and he got a good look at her face. He felt a moment of shock. In the time he’d known her she’d never had a tan; in fact her face was always unnaturally white, as if she used some kind of foundation. Right now her face looked pale with something more than powder: she looked drained, and her green eyes had circles under them, and some wrinkles at either corner he’d never noticed before. She was five-six—maybe five-seven—in height and had a ripe but firm figure. He’d noted that when she wanted, she was able to give the impression of being more vulnerable than she could possibly be, a please-Daddy-just-for-me deal that she’d probably been using to get what she wanted all her life. At other times she was rude to the point of almost stamping her feet. Spoiled scum. Today he sensed that at least some of her vulnerability was genuine.
“What did you find out about Dr. Grimes?” she asked.
Atwater always got the impression that speaking softly didn’t come naturally to Parillaud, that the silky lilt was something she’d cultivated. Her natural voice probably had a harsher, coarser edge to it. A hint of that edge leaked through now. She was trying to appear calmer than she felt. That was good. Atwater took the pack of Kools from his pocket.
“Think I’ll have that cigarette after all,” he said.
Parillaud pushed a crystal ashtray across the table and waited while he lit up. Atwater looked at her through the smoke. For once he felt on top of her. It was a feeling he liked.
“In the time I had I didn’t turn up anything that seems significant,” he said.
“Tell me anyway.”
Atwater spoke without reference to the notes he had in his pocket. “Grimes is thirty-eight years old, lives alone in an old fire station in the Irish Channel. He has no criminal record and no service records. Qualified M.D., University of Chicago. Did postgrad training there in general and trauma surgery, then disappeared to Central America—Nicaragua or Salvador, maybe both—for a couple of years.”
“Why?”
“I believe he did some kind of aid work during the fighting there—I guess Red Cross-type stuff. I’m waiting to find out more on that. He returned to the States around eight years ago and gave up surgery, completed another residency program in psychiatry, this time at Tu-lane. I’m told it’s not so unusual for medics to change specialty in mid-residency, but it’s unusual to complete a whole program and then start over again. Now he specializes in treating drug addicts, mainly heroin.”
A shadow of anxiety—a question—flitted across Parillaud’s face. Atwater paused but Parillaud said nothing.
He went on, “Far as I can tell Grimes is respected but considered something of an outsider in professional circles.”
“Why did he come to New Orleans?” she said.
“I don’t know Since there wasn’t much to show on him I ran a cross-check on his family. He’s got a brother named Luther, a real bad actor: Vietnam war hero of the psycho category, later spent time in Angola State for nearly killing two guys in a fistfight. His whereabouts are unknown. Their father, George, lives in Algiers, might be the reason Grimes settled down here. George is an old commie union guy, worked as an organizer for the American Federation of Labor during the fifties and sixties. He’s got a long record of arrests, all for union stuff, including one jail term of eight years in Illinois for assaulting a cop during a strike. Clean slate for the past thirty years.”
None of his findings had suggested any connection to Clarence Jefferson, but he didn’t say so. He leaned forward to flick his ash.
“I’m afraid that’s about all I got, Miss Parillaud.”
Parillaud was still standing. She clasped her hands together. The movement was executed casually enough but Atwater got the impression it was intended to stop her hands shaking.
“You’ve been very thorough,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
Atwater puffed on his Kool to lay down a little smoke. He chose his words carefully.
“I presume this is something to do with our looking for Captain Jefferson’s little library,” he said.
“No,” she said, just a beat too quickly. “It’s another matter. A personal problem.”
Atwater looked at her and thought: You lying, pasty-faced bitch, I am going to see you on your knees after all. He waited for her to ask about progress on the Jefferson investigation. If she didn’t ask, Atwater’s mind would be made up.
“I need to speak with Dr. Grimes in person. Face-to-face,” said Parillaud.
Inside, Atwater smiled. His face he twisted into an expression of concern.
“I’m sure he’d be happy to. I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“As I say, it’s personal.”
“Of course. I don’t mean to pry.”
“I want you to escort Dr. Grimes out here to see me, this evening. Now. As soon as you can find him.”
The smile vanished from Atwater’s inner face. He had other plans for tonight. She read his hesitation.
“I ask you because I know you’re thorough and utterly discreet. You are also capable of the appropriate delicacy.”
He had to hand it to her: she even managed a shadow of the little-girl-lost smile that he guessed had swung some of the biggest deals in recent times her way. Even as he had the thought, he felt himsel
f blushing with pleasure and heard himself saying, “Sure, Miss Parillaud, whatever you want.”
She nodded. “Then I’ll see you later, with Dr. Grimes. Thank you, Mr. Atwater.”
She stood there waiting for him to get up and leave as if he’d just finished shining her shoes. She was amazing. Atwater wanted to say, “Yes sir, no sir, three bags full.” Instead he stood up and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.
“I’ll get right on it,” he said.
“If at all possible I’d like Dr. Grimes to come out here voluntarily. Don’t push him. Ask him politely and promise him my gratitude.”
“And if it’s not possible?” said Atwater.
“Then use your judgment. Just make sure you bring him to me.”
“I can’t guarantee I’ll find him tonight.”
This time the real voice broke through her self-control.
“Then let me know the situation and keep on looking, Mr. Atwater.”
Her eyes drilled into him. Tiger eyes. To his shock Atwater felt physically afraid. He took a pace backward and blustered, “Anything you say, Miss Parillaud.”
With that Atwater nodded goodbye and left. In the corridor stood Bobby Frechette. Atwater shrugged his jacket and walked past without speaking. He felt the nigger walk behind him all the way to the front door but declined to flatter him with a backward glance or a word of goodbye. On the way down the wide portico steps toward Jack Seed’s Impala, Atwater reflected on Parillaud’s strange mood. His hunch was that the Grimes angle was an avenue going nowhere. Maybe it was just what she said it was, a personal matter. Maybe the letter she’d gotten that morning said she had breast cancer or something. Why, then, a psychiatrist? And why get Atwater to run a check on him for her? He remembered the lie in her voice. No, he had to treat the Grimes development seriously, cover it properly. In the meanwhile Jack could set the ball rolling. Tonight. Atwater’s gut was clear about that. He couldn’t wait. There was something building. He had to press on tonight; but he couldn’t spring Jefferson from the concrete prison by himself. Atwater opened the Chevy door and climbed inside. He looked at Jack.
