by Brian Hodge
But. American interests were safe. Panama was business as usual. And with the fascists still in the palace, the climate was still looking favorable for American businesses who wanted cheap labor to build factories in Port-au-Prince. No wonder American business encouraged the scouring away of the countryside’s trees. With the topsoil eroded to the sea, a continued influx of desolate farmers into Port-au-Prince was guaranteed. A never-ending supply of black hands eager to work for three dollars a day, live in a cardboard shack, and grill dinner over charcoal in a hubcap.
Once upon a time, Moreno had been told that his job description was a foot soldier for foreign policy. He just wished he’d stopped to ask what that policy was. Slave states came as a rude awakening, even to a cynic.
With the distant scream of jet engines across a crimson sky, Moreno had drained his fourth rum of the hour, then looked at Christophe Granvier, and said, “You want out of here?”
“Out of … where?”
“The country.”
Christophe had appeared to give it about as much thought as what to have for breakfast. “I would like that. Yes.”
Relief. Couldn’t force the man to expatriate, but leave him behind and he’d soon turn up dead, if he turned up at all. Of that Moreno had no doubt. At the very least, Faconde would have friends who might look for him. And while U.S. immigration policies weren’t particularly kind to Haitians, Moreno thought he could pull a few strings on Christophe’s behalf. The man had, after all, gotten a diploma from an American university.
And it was settled as easily as that. Moreno owed more favors than he could count to some of these people. Airlift one of them out to safety and maybe his own life would count for something after all.
As for himself? He knew a letter of resignation was waiting to be typed as soon as he hit American soil again. Private life was sounding steadily more attractive.
Besides, with the Agency, he’d hit a dead end and knew it. Promotion was everything to career longevity, and his GS-13 status was apt to stay there. No fault of his own, lots of employees in intelligence plateaued out around GS-12, GS-13, never had a chance to make it to the supergrades. Women, certainly. As for himself, he simply had the wrong color skin. He knew the truth by now as well as anyone.
And let it set him free.
Down in Special Registry, Moreno logged on to the network and electronically pulled out everything the FBI’s Organized Crime Bureau had on tap about Nathan Forrest Mullavey and his silent partner brother. Not sure what he was looking for; any morsel that might be turned to meager advantage. While he respected Christophe immensely, and that young couple that fate had thrown him in with seemed to have level heads, he couldn’t rely on them to provide a complete picture of the players.
So. Anything here that might be used to convince Nathan Forrest’s people to back off? It would have to be worked out via diplomacy. No way could this be allowed to turn into a shooting match. Talk about a no-win situation.
Nathan Forrest’s profile looked much in the same mold as any of two dozen wiseguy profiles he had seen. Moreno knew nothing of the New Orleans underworld, but he made a point to keep tabs on the players in Miami. Information was currency — he wasn’t about to let some seemingly legit businessman scam him into running an elaborate security net, and have it turn out the guy was setting himself up in the cocaine trade.
OCB files indicated that Nathan Forrest Mullavey had come up through the ranks of a mob comprised mainly of Southern crackers and Irishmen. Started young, as a numbers runner, then arrested at the age of sixteen for shooting a guy twice his age thrice in the head. Case dismissed due to lack of evidence. Victim was black — you had to wonder if the DA’s office had tried very hard. At any rate, Moreno found it a fascinating portrait of privileged youth gone wrong. Rich manufacturer father, now here was a kid anxious to disassociate himself from everything about Daddy.
Everything since then was typical of a man who’d learned to scavenge from the underbelly of a city and make the legal system work to his advantage. Oh, there were the pretenses to being merely an honest businessman with bad PR — witness the man’s restaurant, and his maritime imports business on the river wharves — but these were obviously a front. He had weathered the usual token indictments every few years: racketeering, bribery, conspiracy. Sometimes never making it past the grand jury, the rest of the time acquitted due to lack of evidence, recalcitrant witnesses, recanted testimony, or witnesses who mysteriously got sick and died.
It was enough to make you give serious consideration to the voodoo rumors, and not just lip service based on applications of a powder that simulated death and resurrection. That Forrest and his reputed main trigger man, Terrance Fletcher, aka Eel, had ties to Haiti was no fiction, and Haiti was a weird place indeed. He had seen it himself, had lived on that island for eight months and had felt its currents of mystery.
That Forrest had successfully exploited it here was a stroke of genius. Not unlike François Duvalier and his rise to power.
Because Moreno understood what most private citizens whose knowledge of organized crime began and ended with The Godfather did not: The mob wasn’t any tight, streamlined organization like some corporate structure operating outside the law. No, it was usually some guy or guys perched at the top of the heap with the most effective private army around, and beneath them was a bunch of independent hoods who kicked a share of their profit upstairs in tribute because they didn’t want to take a bullet or blowtorch in the face. The whole power structure was a cheesecloth of tacit agreements to keep things running smoothly for the sake of low profiles, but it could rip at any time, should any one element tip too far out of balance.
That Nathan Forrest had kept himself at the top for six years — and in strong contention for nearly a decade prior to that — was testament to serious backing. He had reputedly forged a fairly peaceful coexistence with not only the Sicilian mob but the blacks, the Latinos, and a particularly strong Cajun contingent headquartered across the river in Algiers. They must all have been terrified of the man, and with this kind of company, the reasons would most assuredly have been well earned.
Moreno ran a check on the same names through the computer net of the National Crime Information Center, as well, but turned up nothing of any additional interest until, on a whim, he decided to check up on Justin Gray.
Something funny about that guy. He could be a prick when he wanted, but a sly prick; he generally knew just when to back down. And he wasn’t intimidated in the least by an authority figure, as if he’d had a few run-ins, and learned to hold his own.
The NCIC spit out what came as no surprise. Drug bust in St. Louis just under two years ago; Gray had parlayed state’s evidence into a ticket to freedom.
But now this was weird. Something about an altercation in Tampa last year with a now-deceased coke dealer named Antonio Mendoza. Particulars were unavailable because…
Because this incident had a separate classified file devoted to it? He’d never even seen this kind of thing before at the NCIC level. Holy shit, just what had this guy been into?
Definitely have to ask him about that one.
Justin Gray … this guy was wanting out of a hairy situation he’d gotten into with Andrew Jackson Mullavey, and officially had a dirtier past than the man he wanted to bring down.
Because A. J. Mullavey looked as clean as an altar boy. How hard had he worked to keep it that way? Not even so much as a sideways glance from the IRS. Clean. Spotless. Adored.
Maybe they could work with that after all.
Chapter 25
Pride and Prejudices
Ruben Moreno got back to New Orleans late Tuesday morning, and Justin surprised himself with how glad he was to see that smooth, brown head. At last, some action to take, break this spell of ennui.
But it was like the honeymoon they’d never had, in another sense, he and April holed up for hours at a stretch without once glimpsing daylight. Bed gymnastics became inevitable, sometimes out of bor
edom, other times in the heat of cabinfever psychosis. They’d tear into each other with much sweating and gnashing of teeth, until they were left spent upon the sheets, while calm descended, and they could touch once more with contented fingertips alone.
So long as they had release, they had sanity.
“How are you doing?” he asked her. Monday afternoon, naked atop rumpled sheets, DO NOT DISTURB still hanging on the other side of the door.
In that question Justin had meant everything. Looking down to her from one braced elbow: April, eased back into her pillow, hair in wild disarray, shining with a delicious film of sweat and one leg cocked in deep carnal awareness. She seemed so small in the moment, yet so powerful, the reed that bends. He knew he could never love anyone else this way, so wholly, so lavishly, because no one else could scare him quite so well. Without even meaning to.
April met the question with tranquil, knowing eyes. “I’m okay.” Laughing low, almost inaudibly, sound of feminine mystery. “I’m in for the duration, Jus. Don’t worry.”
He doodled on her bare belly with one fingertip, dipped it into the moist well of her navel. “I’ve been wondering about something. About … life.”
“My philosopher,” she said.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, or by the end of the week. I don’t know, you don’t know. We could be dead, it could happen. But part of me wonders if maybe it’s not easier to live this way, instead of some daily grind where you’re expected to just keep quiet.”
“Our life back home is a grind?”
He drilled her belly button. “You know what I mean.” She’d been teasing anyway. And knew precisely: subsuming yourself into daily career drudgery, with no end in sight.
She pulled him down onto the bed, onto herself, his head upon her belly. Stroking his hair while he shut his eyes and nuzzled damp skin, to remember its smell, its taste, always.
“Maybe a holocaust is easier than the life of quiet desperation,” she said. “You’re never alone in a holocaust.”
“And, for better or for worse, you can conceive of its end.”
He felt her fingers curl in, tighten upon his hair, pleasant tugging at his scalp, and there she held him. “What are you going to do when we get home?”
“Quit work or stay, you mean?”
“You know that’s what I mean.”
Justin smiled into her belly. Thinking of yesterday morning’s call to Segal/Goldberg, accounting for his continued absence. How grand the truth would have tasted, Hi, it’s me, I’m stuck in New Orleans, you know that client with the big white ass you want us all to pucker up to? Well, weirdest thing; he helped poison five people and now he’d like to have me killed. Yeah, maybe I’ll be in in a day or two. Instead he had bullshitted, claiming a week of vacation he still had coming.
And once it was over? April’s question lingered.
“I don’t know,” he said.
He heard the slow intake of her breath, knew she was about to say something and he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. Needed to, probably, but didn’t want to. Not now, with the situation what it was. Anything, then, to undercut the moment, seize it from her lips. He nibbled just above that musky aromatic wedge of pubic hair and laughed.
“No reason to lose sleep yet. Maybe I won’t have to worry about it at all.”
She lightly whacked the side of his head. “That’s not funny.”
No, it probably wasn’t. Not to April, at least. He rolled off beside the bed and up onto his feet, stretched as his semierection bobbed. Turncoat, always giving him away.
“Who wants to take a shower with me?” he said.
April twined across his vacated side of the bed, shut her eyes in pained benediction and threw her arms around his waist, drew him tight, so tight, cheek to hip, and her searching mouth found him wanting. He met her, with a surge, with a shudder, and she never had to say a word to remind him of the feeling of loss.
But they couldn’t last, these days of sensual delirium. Someday, one of them would surely awaken to the languid hangover of sexual excess and wonder what it was they were really trying to accomplish on this bed. What they were running from, or toward, and doomed never to achieve, because no one could run very far in the horizontal.
So when Moreno arrived late Tuesday morning, Justin was ready. Willing. Stable.
He had driven this time, an all-nighter from Miami, and looked as faded and beat up as the leather of his bomber jacket. Coffee and adrenaline had brought out every capillary in his eyes, and he called Justin outside to help him at the sedan’s trunk.
“Why the road trip this time?” Justin asked.
“This is why,” Moreno said, and hefted one of two flat cases into Justin’s hand. The other he took himself, along with a soft leather travel bag. “My line of work, I can get away with flying a pistol in cargo, I make arrangements ahead of time. This time? I thought I might be pushing my luck a little.”
They carried his luggage into Christophe’s room, slung the pieces along one bed. Clothes and shoes and toiletries, mostly, in the leather bag. A minor gun shop in the other two. Moreno passed out pistols as if they were party favors. The one in Justin’s hand felt familiar, like a handshake from long ago.
“You said you like Berettas,” Moreno told him. “This is the same thing, a Taurus, same factory out of Brazil. The only Beretta I have is traceable back to me. None of these are.”
April turned a smaller automatic in her hand, making solemn acquaintance. Granvier held his own back out to Moreno.
“I would rather not,” he said.
Moreno pushed it back to Granvier’s chest. “Don’t get righteous on me, Christophe, okay? Just don’t. Anyway, I’m hoping we’ll just look at these, that’s all we’ll do with them. Just a precaution.”
After Justin returned the gun, Moreno announced it was conference time, then sagged into one of the chairs. Stretching to prop his feet up on the bed, he groaned deep in his chest, and with a furrowed brow massaged his pink neon eyes. Christophe fixed him a cool wet washcloth folded lengthwise. Moreno draped it over his eyes, pressed, smiled crookedly.
“Mmmm. Better.” He relaxed his head back over the seat, spoke toward the ceiling while swiveling his hand at whomever he meant to talk to. First to Justin: “You were right, who I used to work for. I went to Langley yesterday to flex whatever clout I had left with anyone, and access the computers. See if there might be anything on these guys to use as leverage.” And then the heart-sinking pronouncement: “It was a waste, really. Nathan Forrest looks locked in as solid as any guy like that can be. With good reason, probably. I didn’t see anything I could exploit. And somebody like that you can’t bluff.”
Justin’s mouth felt dry, airless. He looked at the scattering of pistols across the table. Why don’t we save him the trouble, then? Suicide pact in Gretna motel, film at eleven.
“Have to work on his brother, then.” To April: “Correct me if I’m wrong. Saturday you mentioned a local reporter, didn’t you?”
“Uh huh. Ron Babbet is his name.”
“Can you trust him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you met him? Talked to him since you’ve been in town?”
“Not really. I left a message on his answering machine Friday night from our hotel, and I said I’d call back, but … well, you know how things got out of hand.”
“Call him. Soon as we finish talking. Set up an appointment, this afternoon if possible, so you can take him that last disk with the pirated files from Caribe. We’ll talk more, once it’s set up, we’ll cover the appeal you’ll have to make to this guy.”
Moreno’s hand moved on to Granvier. Like watching a weather vane in gusting winds. “You’re the only local here. Can you think of a restaurant or someplace like that, with a two-story dining room, where the second floor overlooks the first? The more informal the better, I don’t want some twit in a tux telling me where I have to sit.”
Granvier steepled his lon
g fingers in thought, tapped them. “There’s the Creole Pot. The street it’s on, I forget. It has three sides, I think, above the floor. Very casual.”
“Good, good.” Back to Justin: “Okay, you’re a huckster for a living, now you get to prove just how persuasive you are. Soon as April has something set up with this Ron Babbet, I want you to get on the phone with Andrew Jackson Mullavey and convince him it’s in his best interests to sit down face-to-face and square things between you.”
Justin had his mouth half-open in aborted objection. Moreno knew just when to cut him off. “Don’t worry, nobody’ll make a move on you, the Creole Pot is a public place. And I’ll be there. And once you walk out, you should have your life back again.”
Moreno peeled the washcloth from his eyes, scrubbed back the remaining wisps of his dampened hair. Across the table, his gaze was sorrowfully pragmatic. “I know you came up here with the best intentions. I know you wanted this son of a bitch to pay. But get it through your head right now: He won’t. He just won’t. You think you can go back home and live with yourself, knowing that?”
“Well,” Justin said, sharply, looking down into his lap with a bitter grunt of a laugh. “I guess I’ll have to.” Looking to April, then. She deserved a say too, even if it was no vote, merely grudging surrender.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Moreno nodded. “It’s just as well you didn’t have a chance to go to the media with this. It’s the only leverage you have. I don’t know how Mullavey’s managed to keep his nose looking so clean, but he has, and from what you told me about him Saturday, his public image seems like a huge source of pride to him. The fact that he’s got a crook for a twin brother, that makes him seem like even more of a saint, doesn’t it?”
