by Blake Banner
Seven
That evening I met Bat at the Blue Lagoon on Desiré Street, a small cul-de-sac off St. Claude Avenue, in the heart of town. He wasn’t working that night. Harry, his boss, had told him he didn’t want him working there till the trial was over. People can be helpful like that.
Despite the hour—it was after eight—the temperature had not dropped and it was still unseasonably warm and humid, and half the patrons were out, drinking on the sidewalk. Above, the clouds were dense and a luminous, smoky orange, reflecting the lights from the town.
We shouldered through the crowd, made our way to the bar and ordered an Irish and a Scotch, then carried them to a table in the corner. For a moment, we drank in awkward silence. Then, I said, “I went to see Simone.”
He stared into his drink, tipping it this way and that. “Oh yeah?”
“It seems Sarah was not as happy in her marriage as most people thought.”
He arched his eyebrows, but aside from that made no expression with his face at all. “Oh, right.”
“Seems she was planning to divorce him.”
He finally looked at me, shook his head and sighed. “I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir. Like I said, I barely knew her.”
I gave one nod and after a moment went on, “Also, Carmichael had a change of heart.”
“What does that mean?”
“He sent a car for me this morning. Seems he thought about what I said and believes I’m right. He’s employed me to find out who killed Sarah.”
“That’s a bit fuckin’ weird, innit?”
“Is it? Not really. He saw the logic that a killer of your experience would not leave his fingerprints and his weapon all over the place for the cops to find.”
He stared at me a moment. “Oh.”
“So I examined the crime scene, or, more accurately, the crime scenes.”
“What do you mean, scenes?”
“She was killed upstairs in her bedroom, but he attempted to kill Carmichael downstairs, in the drawing room.”
He frowned, nodded, and said, “OK, and?”
I thought about it a minute. “Let me give you my impressions first, then we’ll try and make sense of them. First thing that struck me, there was a hell of a lot of blood. It was a through and through wound to the belly, four shots, but it was more blood than I have ever seen from that kind of wound.”
He looked uncomfortable and took a swig of his whisky. “What else?”
“The shots were accurate at about twenty feet, well grouped. But downstairs, the guy couldn’t shoot to save his life. Literally. At twenty feet he shot twice, three or four feet wide and high. Then he ran. Carmichael got off three rounds, but he was just as bad. Carmichael was a Marines Gunnery Sergeant.”
That caught Bat’s attention and he stared at me. “And he couldn’t hit a target at twenty feet.”
“Maybe it’s not as odd as it sounds. He was in the Corps about thirty or forty years ago. He was shocked and it was a moving target.”
He wasn’t convinced but he said, “OK, if you say so.”
“So, I’m turning this around in my head and here are my initial thoughts. I’m trying to visualize what happened. Sarah has been out visiting her sister. She comes home early and Carmichael is out, having dinner at a restaurant. She goes upstairs and by eleven she’s in bed, presumably asleep.”
“You got this from Simone?”
“Partly. You know her?”
“Just, you know…” He made a coming-and-going gesture with his hands, like they had crossed each other sometimes in the bar.
I nodded. “Sure. Anyhow, at some time around eleven, the killer gets into the house, either through the front door or through the French doors at the back. The police report says they could find no forced entry. He goes upstairs to the bedroom and enters without waking her. And here is where it gets complicated.”
“How?”
I sighed, still turning it over in my head and wishing I could light up a cigarette. I took a swig and sighed again.
“Because he takes out the gun that you have previously left your prints on, and he does not leave his prints over the top, which means he is wearing latex, surgical gloves. He puts four rounds into her, very tightly grouped, then he leaves your prints on the bedpost and on the door handle, which means he has taken the trouble to make latex copies of your prints.” I paused, watching his face. He looked depressed. I continued. “He then left the room and went downstairs to the drawing room. Presumably he came in that way, via the woods, and planned on leaving that way. But as he’s making his way toward the French doors, Carmichael comes in and turns on the light. The guy panics, lets off two rounds and runs. Carmichael goes upstairs to check on his wife and our guy makes good his escape across the lawn and into the woods, where he carefully leaves the revolver for the cops to find.”
I sat back and he stared at me, incredulous. “He made fuckin’ latex copies of my prints?” He waited a moment, trying to read my face. “Are you having second thoughts? Are you thinking I done it?”
“No. I am convinced you didn’t. Stay with me, Bat. Questions: one, what made this guy choose you for the frame? Two, what makes a guy shoot with such accuracy one moment, and then miss wildly the next?”
He drained his glass. “Well,” he said, smacking his lips and placing it carefully back on the table. “The prints and the shooting all point to a pro—a real pro. Real pros don’t go to pieces because the lord of the manor comes home. So the bad shooting on both parts was a fake, which means that Carmichael was in on it, or employed this bloke to do the job.”
I signaled the waitress for two more drinks. “That was my first thought, and the obvious conclusion. But it has a weakness.”
“What?”
“Everybody, including Carmichael, thought Sarah would be out that night till late, as she usually was when she went to listen to jazz. She told him she was going out for the night. They were coming here, in fact, to listen to you. She went to her sister’s to pick her up, but they got talking about Sarah’s problems with her husband, and in the end they didn’t come. Sarah went home to bed instead.”
“So who knew she was home?”
The waitress brought the drinks, and when she’d gone, I flopped back in my chair and sighed. “On the face of it, Simone. Not exactly an ace hit man.”
He spread his hands and shook his head. “Well, then, what the fuck?”
“Right now, Bat, there is only one way it makes any sense to me.”
“There’s no way it makes fuckin’ sense to me, sir. ’Scuse my fuckin’ French.”
“Think about it. Everybody loves her. She does good works for the community and the environment. At first, I thought maybe there was a jealous lover, or her husband. But when this woman goes out to listen to jazz, apparently that’s not a euphemism. She really did go out to listen to jazz.”
“I told you that, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, you did. So nobody wanted her dead, and nobody except her sister knew she was there at that time…”
I saw his face clear as the penny dropped. “Fuck. She wasn’t the target. He was.”
“That’s the way my mind is going, at least.”
“A man like that might have enemies.”
“You don’t make that kind of money without treading on some toes. So…” I watched him.
He waited.
I said, “What made the killer choose you?”
He sighed. “Honest, I have no idea.”
“I can’t help you, Bat, if you don’t level with me.”
“I am!”
“I know you’re hiding something, Bat.”
He looked away, toward the door, where the crowds were gathered, laughing.
“I can’t force you, pal. But you are not doing any of us any favors by hiding stuff from me. Hell, Bat, what? You don’t trust me?”
“It ain’t that. You know it ain’t.”
“What, then?”
He stared at the table
top a while, then said, “So what you going to do?”
“You mean apart from giving you a sound thrashing and throwing you in the Mississippi?”
“Yeah, aside from that.”
“I’m going to tail Carmichael for a couple of days. I figure if he was the intended victim, whoever it was is going to have to try again. If that’s the case, then they will probably be watching him. So I am going to try to watch the watcher. I also need to find this guy who set you up. But that is going to be hard if you won’t talk to me.”
He looked mad for a moment. “I am talkin’, in’t I?”
I put my elbows on the table and stared him in the face. “Why you?”
He looked away.
“No, Bat, you’re not talking. You’re bullshitting me and I am trying to save your life. I don’t appreciate it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not stupid, Bat. I know what you’re doing. But you’re making a mistake.”
He shrugged and held my eye. I could see there all the obstinacy that had got him into the Regiment in the first place, the obstinacy that had made him one of the best of the best. He had made up his mind, and I knew that nothing I could do would make him budge.
“OK, pal. We’ll do it this way. But you have to realize, sooner or later, whatever it is you are hiding will come out.”
“Yeah, maybe, but not through me it won’t.”
“OK.” I slapped him on the shoulder. “You want to get some food?”
We ordered a couple of burgers and while they were being fried, he asked me, “So, what do you think of Simone?”
I smiled. “She’s as hot as a Carolina reaper. Smart, too. What about you?”
He shook his head. “Nah, not my type. Too fuckin’ dangerous. Too deep.”
“You got that right. What’s your type, then, Bat?”
We’d had the same conversation a hundred times, from the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to the rainforests of Colombia, but it was a good place to revisit and remind ourselves that we were allies, comrades in arms, contra mundum.
He sat back, a lopsided smile on his face, gazing up at the ceiling. “English rose. That’s my type. Peaches and cream complexion, demure, real cut glass accent, like Kate Beckinsale, know what I mean? Bit of class, faithful, shy, blushes easy. But a right fuckin’ daemon in the bedroom!”
We laughed out loud and spent the rest of the evening talking about the old times, remembering old friends, some—not many—dead in action. All of them unique, singular men, because the SAS has a policy of recruiting eccentrics and creative thinkers. We even sang a few songs, and when the band started to play, Bat pulled out his comb and a piece of paper, and jammed with them from where he was sitting at our table, getting more applause and cheers than the band.
At two AM, we stepped out and I walked him home, arm in arm, singing obscene army songs under the angry sky, defying the world to do its worst. We were the Clan, invincible.
At his door, I gripped his hand in mine. “Stay strong, Bat. We’ll win. We always do.”
“Who dares wins, right?”
“Right, who dares wins.”
He went inside and I made my way down Congress toward Chartres Avenue and the Soniat, turning over in my head his description of the ideal woman. I had a feeling I could not shake that, bar the cut glass Beckinsale accent, he had described Sarah Carmichael down to a T.
Eight
Next morning, I was up at six and went for a run before breakfast. It was pitch black and as warm as a summer day. The TV in reception was saying that the NWS’ worst fears were confirmed. Hurricane Sarah had turned north and was now headed across the Gulf straight for New Orleans, causing havoc and leaving utter devastation in her path. The death toll was high, and rising, and the damage to property was already being calculated in the billions.
She was coming, and bringing death with her.
I ran for two miles out of town, through the forest along Tunica Road. I crossed the bridge over the Sara Bayou and came to some open parkland at the junction with Solitude Road. North, the landscape opened up into farmland, but south, where it followed the bayou, the forest grew dense and dark.
I trained for an hour as the horizon in the east turned from black to a menacing, leaden gray. Then I headed back. As I ran, a small column of trucks and cars, laden with their essential possessions, was pulling out of Burgundy, headed north.
Back at the hotel, I stopped at reception, drenched in perspiration, to collect my key. Luis was still glued to the News Channel.
“You’re not leaving?” I asked him.
He made a face and shrugged, reaching for my card. “They saying it’s gonna blow itself out over the Gulf. New Orleans gonna get the brunt of it, but it’ll be a tropical storm by then, you know what I’m sayin’? It ain’t gonna hit Baton Rouge, never mind Burgundy. People panicking, but we a hundred miles from New Orleans, ain’t nothin’ gonna happen this far north.”
“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”
He gave me a look. “You know what, Mr. Walker, sometimes you prepare for the worst, and you make the worst happen.”
I showered and dressed, and by eight fifteen I was sitting in my car in the Burgundy High School parking lot, across the road from the gates to Carmichael’s property, drinking black coffee from a flask. Nothing happened until twelve fifteen. Then Carmichael’s black Lincoln sedan pulled out of the gates onto Route 61 and turned south. I gave him a minute and followed.
I stayed well back, where even if he took the trouble to look, he wouldn’t spot me in his mirror. I trailed him through St. Francisville and on, east and south for another twenty miles through farmland and suburbs into Baton Rouge. We stayed on the Scenic Highway, past the vast Exxon Mobil refinery, till we came to Chippewa Street. We followed that down past the Capitol, with the vast, dark mass of the Mississippi on our right, till we came to Main Street. There, we followed the one way system for four blocks. Just past the Capital One building, I saw them pull into a lot on the right, so I parked outside St. Joseph Cathedral. I watched James open the door for Carmichael. He got out, said something to him, and walked through the lot and into the Gras Tower Plaza, an elegant, two-story red brick office block. James pulled out of the lot and headed east, toward the I-110.
I got out and went to have a look at the brass plaques outside the entrance. There were two. One was Guy Woodbridge, a gynecologist, the other was Dane, Schuster and Wilberforce, attorneys at law. I figured he hadn’t come to see Guy Woodbridge. I went back to my car and waited.
At one thirty, four men in suits came out. One of them was Charles Carmichael. The other three I had never seen before, but they had the look of attorneys. Two of them were non-descript suits, the other was a short, rotund man, completely bald on top and very emphatic in the way he spoke. They walked and talked their way into the parking lot, pausing every few steps for the rotund guy to stress a point, and eventually climbed into a dark blue Cadillac.
I called Hirschfield.
“What?”
“Dane, Schuster and Wilberforce, you know them?”
“That’s a fatuous question. I know of them. They died like a hundred years ago, of old age. Dane and Schuster only had girls. They married money. Wilberforce’s great grandson, or great-great grandson, is now the senior partner. I know him. We play golf.”
“Could you have a conflict of interests here?”
“What is today, Stupid Question Day? A: how could I possibly know if I don’t know what you’re talking about? B: of course not!”
They pulled out of the lot onto Main Street and I followed.
“Carmichael just got into a Caddy with three attorneys from Wilberforce’s firm.”
“Well, that’s not surprising. They specialize in real estate transactions, property law, trusts, that kind of stuff. He probably uses them all the time. What do they look like?”
“Two suits and a short, fat bald guy.”
He laughed. “Tha
t’s Wilberforce. Say hi from me.”
“Yeah, right.”
I hung up and followed them east along Main Street till we joined the I-110. Eventually we pulled on to Route 61 headed north, and I thought at first we were going back to Burgundy, but at the cement works, they turned east on to Route 68, headed toward Jackson.
There was practically no traffic on the road, so I fell right back and trailed them for perhaps six miles, then saw them slow and turn in to what looked like a tree-lined driveway, just past Par Road. For a moment, I was undecided. I didn’t even know for sure why I was here or what I expected to find. I just had some vague idea that Sarah’s killer might be stalking Carmichael. But so far I had seen no sign of that.
I made a decision and turned onto Par. About a quarter of a mile along, parallel with the house where they seemed to be headed, there was a dense woodland. I left the Zombie there, concealed among the trees, took my binoculars from the glove compartment, and made my way on foot, through the forest, toward the house.
This was neither Georgian nor Creole. This was a modern mansion, probably not more than twenty years old. It belonged squarely in the new millennium. It was a stack of four, white, concrete rectangular cuboids piled on top of each other at forty-five degree angles with huge, plate glass windows, spiral exterior staircases, stepped gardens, and a stream that seemed to run through the house. It was spectacularly ugly to look at, but probably just spectacular on the inside.
I eventually found them in the top cuboid, which seemed to be one vast space with a central, copper fireplace and large, minimalist Scandinavian style furnishings. It was like IKEA on steroids. I settled on my belly among the ferns and watched them.
They were all animated and talked a lot, especially Wilberforce and Carmichael. They had their attaché cases open and, while they sipped what looked like cognac, they studied documents which they handed back and forth while they spoke. You didn’t need to be Patrick Jane to work out they were discussing a big deal, and that they were happy about it.
Wilberforce made a couple of phone calls. After that, the exchanges became more relaxed. There was a lot of laughing and less exchanging of documents. The hours slid by and the sky grew darker, but the clammy heat did not grow less. At six, in the cuboid beneath the party, I saw a man in a white jacket, and a couple of girls in French maid uniforms, setting a table and lighting a fire. It looked like this was going to be a long night.
