by Brian Hodge
Napoleon appeared neither surprised, nor complicitous. Very calm, all at once, and for the moment much older. What had those brown eyes seen in that house? Invisible behind the wheel of the limo, what had his ears heard? Knowledge could be such a burden, and burdens could either strengthen or break the bearer.
And then he smiled. Like a priest.
“I don’t know. You’re leaving here. Don’t be sad about that. When you get home you will be even happier, you will be with people you love. And that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”
No arguments from Justin. Homeward bound.
Chapter 11
Shipping and Receiving
Bayou Rouge was ninety minutes behind them by midnight. Eel and company, two implicitly trustworthy sorts, plus their charter boat captain. The skipper was Bayou Rouge born and bred, although he had profited enough over the years from clandestine importation of this and that, that he’d resettled a few miles on around the honeycombed coast with his own deep sea fishing charter. Man with a dream, Eel could respect that. Still on call for the occasional excursion, though, always willing. The money was good, and the IRS never heard a word about it.
Eel moved for the bow, where the prow narrowed sharply. He stepped out onto the pulpit, to its very tip, both hands on the railing to keep him steady. More aware here of the boat’s motion, the gentle rise and fall beneath him. Eyes on the moonlit horizon. Wondering who else had stood here, under different circumstances. Rod in hand, steel line and a hook in the mouth or gills or gut of something that would battle for hours. Never giving up even after the point of exhaustion. One had to admire fight like that.
Eel shivered, used one hand to draw his jacket tighter. It was the second weekend in October, and come nightfall, the wind off the Gulf was getting nippy. The pulpit, though, he liked it out here, all that ship behind him, all that horsepower. And he at its tip, like some kind of oncoming god. There were truths to be learned here, about how to ride something’s power and not fight it. Square off against some things and they would grind you right under, cut you up and leave you less than a slick spot in their wake. The man who knew when to force a heavy hand, and when to hold tight and ride … he was the one who would walk away when the ride was over.
The charter was alone when it reached the loran coordinates, some forty miles south of the mainland in the Gulf. The Cajun skipper shut down and dropped anchor, and here they settled in to wait.
Eel strolled back from the pulpit, edged his way around the cabin. Both his men inside, same two who had come down in midsummer to help take care of Dorcilus Fonterelle. They were smoking now, out of the chill, looking as if they would just as soon be back in New Orleans.
How few could truly appreciate the power of the sea by night.
Eel kept on, aft now, settled into one of the marlin chairs anchored on either side of the deck. Held his feet up while giving the chair an experimental spin, like a kid on a diner stool.
Life under Nathan Forrest kept him busy, but really, he should take time to do this every now and then. Charter a boat and head out past all sight of land and keep going. To hell with sport fishing, he saw no point to that, just pick a spot and shut down and float for hours. Night, it would have to be night, without clouds, and a huge swollen moon.
Like now.
It helped put things in perspective. Made you realize how small you were. You and the boat mere specks bobbing on a sculpted plane of black and silver, shimmering night sea. That darkest and most eternal of chasms beneath you, the only thing keeping you from plummeting to its bottom the worthiness of some stranger’s craftsmanship. And the favor of gods who could drive gaping holes into your future if sorely crossed.
The skipper came out of the cabin, said he’d just gotten a radio message. Their parcel was minutes away.
There soon came the drone of an engine from the southeast. A black speck in the distance. There was some flashing of signal lights back and forth, and the arriving boat idled up alongside. Hulls thumped gently against one another, and were held fast for as long as it took the one passenger to make the transfer. And then there was the matter of his luggage. Nervy bastard, he’d traveled with four suitcases? The deckhands heaved it piece by piece over to Eel’s men, who stowed it in the cabin.
The transfer was essentially wordless, and the delivery boat cut a circle and left behind a wake aiming for the long, long haul back to the Cayman Islands.
“Get me out of this cold,” said their arrival, and Eel ushered him into the cabin. The man settled his bulk on one of the cushioned seats, briskly blowing warmth into one hand. Only then did the new arrival really regard Eel. “You’re looking well. Is it this light … or have you not aged since I last saw you?”
Eel smiled thinly. “I live right.”
How long had it been? Seven years, roughly. He’d last seen Luissant Faconde in his native land, Haiti. The man had been rich and powerful at the time. Now he was merely rich. And dangerous, too, Eel supposed.
Faconde was not a tall man, perhaps five-eight. One of those light-skinned mulattoes who so favored themselves in Haitian high society in Port-au-Prince, self-affected natural superiority over their darker-skinned countryman in the slums and rural areas. He was well fed then and well fed now, a prodigious belly and heavy round shoulders, thighs like sandbags. A round face and even rounder head, with wire-rimmed glasses. He looked like a depraved cherub.
Most notable, though, was the absence of a left ann. A stump that ended midway between shoulder and elbow. His jacket had been specially tailored: sleeve cut short, then pinned shut with a single fold.
Eel nodded at his amputation. “You never replaced it. I’d think you’d have enough money for that.”
Luissant Faconde scowled, disdainful of the idea, his heavy cheeks bunching. “I want no plastic, no metal contraptions strapped to my body. I wear this stump with honor.”
Eel nodded again. Honor above vanity — commendable, if functionally stupid.
It was Faconde’s first time in the western hemisphere since February of 1986. Came out of Monaco earlier this week, three days in a Cayman Islands hotel. Charter boats arranged at both ends, and here he was: switched in the middle of the Gulf like a cocaine transaction, and New Orleans bound. A bit extreme on the secrecy, but Faconde wanted no record of himself entering U.S. borders, not even under a phony passport. Someone from Customs might recognize him, he’d protested. Bullshit, Eel had thought, and Nathan Forrest had simply laughed, said the man was suffering from an ego the size of his Swiss bank accounts. But, given the latter, certainly they could tolerate the former. Go with a midnight run if it makes him happy.
“Where will I be staying?” Faconde asked.
“Just west of New Orleans. A. J. Mullavey’s estate. Lots of room, you’ll like it there. It’s very secluded.”
“He still has the Haitian workers, doesn’t he? I could be recognized.”
Eel shook his head. “Never happen. Look, Luissant, you were a governmental minister in charge of coffee exports. You were low profile. Most of these people were from the countryside. Half of them wouldn’t recognize Jean-Claude Duvalier himself if he walked in.”
Faconde pursed his lips. Looked down with a scowl, then nodded. “Perhaps you’re right. I worry too much.” Getting up then, stepping just behind and beside the Cajun at the helm, to peer eagerly out at the night, the path ahead. To ride the moonlight all the way to Bayou Rouge.
Faconde glanced back, face beaming. Ready for all the fun his money could buy.
The first shipments of Caribe Coffee Bags reached the shelves the week of October fourteenth. From the very start, they looked to pose minimal threat to the market base established by Magnolia Blossom in its first six weeks, at least according to the information that trickled down to Justin at the office.
Magnolia Blossom had behind it the marketing machine of a food manufacturer that already had national distribution. Caribe was starting smaller; regional distribution in the Southeast to begin with
, and it would progress from there.
Accordingly, its advertising campaign was far more humble than that of the competition, and for that Justin felt a certain degree of cockiness. Some radio spots — reggae music background, big surprise, he could have called that one in his sleep — and some newspaper coupons. Ads with palm leaves, coffee beans and a minor cornucopia of the bounty to be found in the flavored varieties: chocolate, almonds, chicory, more. Acceptable promo, but nothing that grabbed you by the ears. No Ad Age writeups here.
Thursday evening, 6:00 P.M.
It was Justin’s turn to cook, and when sufficiently motivated he could turn into a regular dervish in the kitchen. Stir fry tonight. The kitchen’s cutting block was littered with sliced mushrooms, water chestnuts, snow peas, deboned chicken, and more. Knife hand flashing, working on bamboo shoots. Wok on the stove burner, with Mongolian Fire Oil at the ready. Tonight they would feast until their lips burned.
April was back in the partitioned area that served as the loft’s living room. Couch and chairs, coffee table and electronics. CNN was playing at the moment, Headline News, and everything was one blurry sound bite. He could hear her talking to the cat, Ajax, Poor thing are you in heat again?
These past three-plus weeks had been good ones. Scary good. He’d come home from the weekend at Mullavey’s with a wholly renewed appreciation for this woman who had consented to sharing her life with his. Their kiss in the airport, Justin fresh off the plane back to Tampa … it felt like the first kiss at the altar. All of his focus pouring into April except for one little twinge at the back of his neck. He could sense Leonard’s eyes, could feel that sad burn from the man, perhaps a nonmalicious envy. Missing earlier, more heated days with his own wife, or days never known at all. The both of them, now returned to the real world, and it seemed their reactions were polar opposites.
Life back at home, new again…
Justin and April would lie in each other’s arms at night, bodies cooling in the afterglow while the bed seemed too big. So very familiar with the intimate ache. Love is a hole in the heart, he had read in the recent past, forgetting where but knowing it to be so. Sometimes he wondered if maybe they’d cleaved together for all the wrong reasons. They both had holes, and last year had put every single one of them on unlovely display before the other. Who else was better qualified to call on for the patchwork?
But it had to be more than that. You don’t base life and love around the holes, you build over them. Could they have even lasted the first year if that’s all it had been? No. No way, he refused to believe that.
He turned on the stove burner, began to shake the oil into the wok, coat its sides when April called out.
“Jus! Come here!” Very firm.
“Can it wait? I’m just starting the stir fry.”
“Come here, now!”
Such urgency, what gives? He frowned and cranked the burner off beneath the wok, picking up speed halfway there when she began to chant, “Hurry, hurry—”
April was on the edge of her seat, in lime shorts and ponytail, and if in dress she looked utterly carefree, the effect was ruined by her expression. Too taut, too sharp, and she was shushing him with one index finger and pointing to the television with the other.
CNN Headline News. He took one look at the screen and felt everything tighten, every sphincter clench.
The anchor was at his desk, a wall of blurry studio monitors in the background, out of focus. The grimmest newsman’s face since Dan Rather, and the floating upper-right-screen story logo showed a simple package graphic stamped with a skull-and-crossbones, with lettering above that read PRODUCT TAMPERING.
“…Georgia residents have died of cyanide poisoning since last night. Both deaths have been linked with a new coffee product that reached shelves in the Southeast just this week. Traces of cyanide have been found in Caribe Coffee Bags, manufactured by Carrefour Imports of New Orleans…”
Justin stiffly hit the sofa beside April.
“Isn’t that the brand you’re competing against?” she whispered.
“Yeah.” Barely a hushed grunt in her ear.
It went on, names of the deceased. A woman in Smyrna, Georgia, a man in nearby Woodstock. No information yet available as to how the tampering had been accomplished, only that cyanide had been found in both the decedents’ discarded coffee bags. Caribe, in both instances. An FDA spokeswoman making a statement, listing product shipment codes, check your packages for the numbers. Caribe was being pulled off the shelves until the matter was cleared up, understood.
Next up, a train derailment in Utah forced the evacuation of two thousand residents…
…and Justin felt himself unhinge, body liquid, bones gone to rubber. Sagging back against the sofa with a frown. This wasn’t even his product and it was still too close to home. You heard of these things and they were always so distant. Tylenol out west, Chilean grapes in FDA custody in Philadelphia. Never in your own arena.
“You okay?” April said, her hand dropping to his knee.
He snatched the remote control from the coffee table, its haphazard scattering of magazines. Toxic chemical leakage in Utah, film right here and now, and he didn’t want to see. Could not handle it at the moment. He thumbed a button and made it go as far away as he could. Hands off my life.
Justin leaned back against the sofa, down low. Sitting on his spine, his mom used to call it, with maternal derision. “Why does a part of me feel responsible?”
Both her hands were on his leg now, the pressure building.
Fingernails curling into his thigh as if to hold him down, keep him there. Keep him sane.
April deadlocked eye contact with him, in urgency. “Jus, you’ve never been the type to feel guilty about the things you had no control over. Only the things you did. Unlike me. Please, don’t make the same mistake I used to. You can only tear yourself up inside … one little rip at a time.”
She spoke truth, of course. He shut his eyes, let her hands relax, move into a gentle stroking of his leg. Nice, nice.
“Sometimes it feels like I will things. To happen.” He opened his eyes, sought the sight of her. April’s heart and soul two feet away and he wanted to take them into himself. “When I got the Magnolia Blossom account, that morning a part of me wanted Todd to fuck up, because he’s basically an asshole. And he did.”
“So the Peter Principle kicked in,” she said. “He rose to his highest level of incompetence.”
Justin smiled. “So I got the account. Usurped it right out from under him. So I worked, and worked, to make it the best campaign I could. I really went rabid those weeks. You know why?”
“Why?”
“Because the whole time, I had this Caribe brand staring me in the face. That was my motivation. I had an enemy, see? All that overtime, the whole time I was just wanting to grind Caribe into the dirt. I hated Caribe. And it wasn’t because I had any love for Andrew Jackson Mullavey, even then. It’s just because … Caribe was an obstacle.”
April leaned back with him. Touched a cool fingertip to his cheek, the stubble of the day. The sweat. “So now you think you’re a warlock. Casting spells. A warlock of consumerism.” Spoken with a wry grin.
He smiled back at her, kissed her. “No. I know better. Don’t worry, I do.” Shaking his head. “This is why the job isn’t fun anymore. It’s not about creativity anymore for me. What really gets me off is finding somebody to stick it to. So I can win at something.” He looked at the television, its eye gray and dead. “Caribe was brand new. It didn’t have a market base yet, loyal buyers. This is going to destroy it. So. I win. I got what I wanted.”
She held him and he held her. Shelter. Sick world out there, sometimes. Like there was an ongoing battle for souls as well as dollars. The battlefield of consumerism, and the crazies could win every time. Cyanide dosage hidden away like an edible land mine. Boom, you’re dead. It was the price of democracy and a free market economy, and he could deal with that as an academic concept. But when it hit
CNN Headline News, that was when the casualties had faces, names, crying families left behind in shock to wonder about fate. Because of the crazies. And he knew as well as anyone that crazies could be found at both ends of the product line. This was becoming more and more apparent.
“You want me to finish cooking?” April said after a while. He shook his head against her. “No. I want to.”
Justin was standing at the stove a minute later, oil heating in the wok as he looked down at the cutting board. Laden with sliced meat, chopped vegetables. How much did he know about where they had come from, really? Not a thing. And soon they would be in his body, April’s body. Such peculiar mercies they lived under. Such blind trust.
Justin tilted the cutting board, scraping a minor avalanche into the wok. The sizzle, the rich steam … they were like the first cloudburst of a coming storm.
He knew what he wanted. Desperately. To hear that whoever had put the cyanide into the coffee bags had been caught. Detection swift and justice expedient. If casualties had to have names and faces, then so should those responsible for putting them in the drawers of the morgue. Probably some loner. Random poisoners worked that way, didn’t they? Alone? Him, her … Justin wanted to hear that the sick fuck had been caught, like he hadn’t wanted anything for a long time.
Four days later, on Monday, he got that, too.
Chapter 12
The Accused
He had heard it before; God willing, he would never hear it again. But certainly its echoes rang today: the sound of the world falling apart around him.
Christophe Granvier arrived with his lawyer at the South Broad Street headquarters of the New Orleans Police Department, late Monday evening. Christophe had wanted to come earlier, had been cautioned by his attorney Virgil Bean to steer clear of the station that afternoon. A regular media feeding frenzy would be had with him if he showed up then, with the news still fresh. Christophe had so far been doing a thorough job of shielding himself from direct media focus ever since the cyanide scare broke last Thursday. But NOPD headquarters, Monday afternoon? Forget it, Bean told him. Every bozo with a camera, a notepad, or a microphone and the First Amendment on his side would be there, every last one snapping for tidbits on the Caribe Killer.
