by Mark Dawson
Milton took the phone, killed the speaker and put it to his ear instead. He didn’t want Alexander to hear this.
“I’m warning you, Avi.”
He laughed. “There’s another way out. Thought I’d get a start on you. Where are you now?”
“Close.”
“No, you’re not. I’ve got ten minutes on you. Minimum. I’m already in the city. How are you going to stop me if you’re ten minutes behind?”
“I’m not alone on this. It’s not just me you have to worry about.”
Bachman laughed again. “Yes, you are, Milton. You always worked alone. You can’t bluff me. And if you do have anyone else, then I’m going to murder them before I get to the girl. I’m going to murder her. Then her parents. Then I’m coming for you. I’m going to make you choke on your own blood.”
“Bachman—”
“Goodbye, Milton.”
#
ZIGGY TURNED right at Washington Square and onto Royal Street. The road was quieter, so he was able to pick up speed. The police cruiser was still after them, the siren presaging its approach until it raced around the corner and barrelled ahead, pressing hard.
“What’s going on?” Elsie Bartholomew asked.
Ziggy looked back at her in the mirror. Her face was eloquent with concern and fear.
“It’s all right, Momma,” Izzy said. “You’re gonna have to trust me.”
“I do, baby. I’m just not used to running from the police is all.”
Ziggy’s phone rang.
He fumbled in the centre console for it, accepted the call, and put it to his ear.
“Milton!”
“I’m coming.”
“The police are after us.”
“Where are you?”
“Royal Street. Just went by the Snug Harbor Jazz Bistro. I don’t know how long I can hold them off.”
“Have you got Izzy?”
“Yes. And her parents. I don’t know—”
“Don’t stop for anyone.”
“But what if I—”
“Bachman’s coming after you.”
“Fuck!” A jaywalker stepped off the sidewalk without looking and Ziggy spun the wheel, the tires screaming as the car slid to the right. Ziggy dropped the phone, the wheels clashing off the curb as he fought for control. The police car was slower to take evasive action, swinging out of the way just in time to miss the man. The driver couldn’t correct the sudden skid and the car climbed the curb, clipped a light post, and crunched into the wall of a building. Ziggy watched in the mirror. The pursuit was over, at least for the moment.
Izzy had reached down for the phone. She held it to Ziggy’s ear.
“Ziggy?”
“I’m here.”
“Hang in there.”
“Where are you?”
“Five minutes away. Just get to court.”
Chapter Fifty-Two
TRAFFIC WAS heavy in front of the courthouse. Milton parked a block away. He got out and sprinted the remaining distance, Alexander lagging behind him and quickly outdistanced. No time to worry about him.
There was a scrum on the courthouse steps. Another case had drawn to a conclusion and, whatever it was, it had excited plenty of media attention. A lawyer was standing at the top, answering questions from a clutch of newspaper reporters. An outside broadcast truck had just pulled up and a cameraman and sound man were setting up their gear, a reporter primping himself in the window of the truck. Other people had gathered to listen to the attorney’s words, contributing to the commotion.
Isadora Bartholomew was pulling her two cases along the sidewalk to the start of the steps. Her mother and father followed a few steps behind her. Ziggy was behind them, scanning left and right. He looked frightened beyond belief, but he was still there, still doing what Milton had asked him to do.
He shouldered through the scrum and reached him.
“Milton. Jesus, am I glad to see you.”
“The police?”
“Lost them.”
Milton looked around. There was no sign of Bachman, but the crowd was heavy and chaotic, and he couldn’t be sure.
Alexander Bartholomew caught up with him.
“Inside,” Milton said to both of them. “It’s not safe out here.”
He climbed the steps. Izzy turned, saw him, saw her brother, and stopped.
“What are you doing here?” Solomon said to his son. “You supposed to be in the rehab.”
“Let’s get inside,” Milton said, placing his hand on the old man’s back and gently impelling him up the steps.
“What’s all this fuss and nonsense about, John?”
“I’ll explain when we’re inside. Please.”
“Pops,” Izzy said. “Let’s go.”
She had relinquished her grip on the two cases. Milton stooped, grabbed the handles, and, waiting as Ziggy ushered Elsie and Solomon up the steps, brought up the rear. They passed from the clamour to the relative peace and quiet of the lobby, the light glinting off the black-and-white tiled floor, and made their way to the courtroom.
Milton didn’t relax—he couldn’t—but it felt as if the threat had passed, if only for the moment.
They reached the entrance to the courtroom.
Dubois was standing outside, his arms folded across his chest. He stepped out and blocked the way ahead.
“Move,” Milton said to him.
“Where’s Babineaux?”
“You don’t need to worry. He’s safe.”
“Where?”
“In the trunk of my friend’s car. You can go and get him if you like.”
“Are you mad?”
Milton rested the cases on the floor. “We’re just getting started. I hope you’ve brought a toothbrush. You’re not going home tonight.”
Dubois took a step up, closer to him. Milton intercepted him smoothly, reaching out to take his wrist. He rested his thumb where his watch would have been and his fingers in the groove where the blood vessels passed by the underside of the wrist and squeezed, compressing the arteries. The jolt of pain flashed across Dubois’s face, and Milton used the moment to place his left hand on his sternum and push him back against the wall, out of the way. It was discreet and swift.
“Don’t do anything silly,” Milton said to him. His voice was even and calm, but laced with threat.
“You’re crazy,” Dubois growled.
Milton squeezed the pressure point again. “I know I am. But I’m not the one who’s going to wake up in Angola tomorrow.”
Milton released his grip. Dubois instinctively massaged the wrist before he realised that he was admitting weakness. He stopped, let his arm fall loose, and glared at Milton.
“Ziggy,” Milton said. “Where did you park?”
“Two blocks north.”
“Give him your keys.”
He looked at him askance.
“Don’t worry.”
Ziggy did as he was asked, handing them to Dubois.
“Like I say, he’s in the trunk. Probably quite vexed about that. Let him out. You’ll save time for everyone if you both go straight to the police.”
“You think this is over?”
“I’m pretty sure it is.”
“It’s not.”
Dubois turned and walked down the corridor and away.
“What are you doing?” Ziggy asked.
“Let them go. They won’t be hard to find. Men like that don’t disappear.”
Izzy looked back at Milton. Her face was lined with concentration, focussed on the things she knew that she would have to say as the hearing began, but, for a moment, a smile broke through. She had dynamite now. Ziggy had provided it for her. When she was done, the city’s case would have been blown into tiny fragments and cast to the wind.
“You ready?” Milton asked her.
“You gonna come watch? It’s gonna be fun.”
Milton said that he would.
She turned back, striding on with purpose, her heels ringing again
st the tile, and Milton followed behind her.
Part Five
Chapter Fifty-Three
MILTON, IZZY AND ZIGGY walked up to the parade route on St. Charles Avenue. The street was hemmed in with people: the sidewalk, the pavement, everywhere, a mad throng that rose and fell with its own undefinable patterns. Everyone was wearing purple, green, and gold. Others held up their smartphones, taking random photographs, the light from the screens leaving swipes across the darkness. Women hiked up their tops, showing their breasts in the hope of receiving necklaces of beads or painted coconuts. Revellers drank Sazeracs from disposable plastic cups and danced to music that throbbed from boom boxes. The street lamps were festooned with tinsel and paper decorations, glitter cascading down in drifts. A mounted policewoman stood sentry at the end of the street, her horse stepping from foot to foot. Other cops in their light blue shirts and dark blue trousers patrolled the fringes, the usual rules relaxed just a little tonight.
Milton looked around. The hullabaloo made him feel uncomfortable.
“What’s the matter?” Izzy asked him.
“Nothing. Just cautious. I can’t help it.”
“Just try to enjoy yourself.”
He smiled. “Not one of my strong points.”
“You gotta relax, Milton.”
“You’re right.”
Ziggy looked over at them.
“It’s over,” he said. “A week and we haven’t heard a word. It’s finished. Done.”
Izzy nodded her agreement. “Listen to him! Everything’s fine.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”
But was it over? Milton was too naturally cautious to accept that. It had been a week to Fat Tuesday, and he had allowed Izzy to persuade him to stay on. He had never been in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, and it was something that he wanted to tick off his bucket list. More than that, he knew, was a lingering reluctance to leave her. He would have to go eventually, of course, but he couldn’t shake the thought that Bachman was still out there. He had given it plenty of thought. In truth, he couldn’t get it out of his head. The odds were good that Bachman would have aborted the assignment and left town. Especially after Internal Affairs had swept through the mayor’s office and the ranks of the NOPD, arresting more than a dozen men and women and adding them to the employees of Joel Babineaux who had already been implicated in the corruption. Jackson Dubois had been picked up at his luxury home as he was making a ham-fisted attempt to pack away his life and leave. He and the others had all joined Babineaux in jail. None of them could look on the future with any degree of optimism.
So, yes. It was most likely that Bachman was gone, submerged in the underworld once more until he resurfaced to take another job. But Milton couldn’t help but to remember what he had said about the woman who had died in the bayou. What if it was his wife, and what if he really did think that Milton had killed her? Even the longest odds came up now and again, and Milton had been wrong before. He couldn’t completely relax.
There was a man who was selling Lucky Dogs over on the other side of the street. His stand was shaped like a foot-long dog, and there was a red and white Coca-Cola parasol overhead.
Ziggy pointed over in his direction.
“You want one?”
“Sure,” Izzy said.
“Milton?”
“I could eat.”
“And a beer?” Izzy suggested.
Ziggy nodded. “You want a bottle, Milton?”
He shook his head. “Some water, please.”
“Coming up.”
Milton watched him go, then turned back to the procession of krewes that were wending their way down the middle of the street. The first group were partying on a truck that had been decorated with a figurehead of a large male head. Men and women in purple robes and blacked-up faces tossed candy to the crowd below. Dancers in oversized papier mâché heads flanked the truck, garlanding the prettier girls with beads and leis. The next float was decorated with fibre-optic lights that flashed on and off, a blur of illumination. The successor had a large red lobster atop the cab, lights glowing from its claws. The next was done out in Zulu fashion, with hand-painted coconuts handed out to the crowds. A marching band followed close by, uptempo jazz reverberating back from the buildings that lined the route.
Izzy stroked his arm. “Relax!”
Milton knew that he must have looked uptight. He made an effort to smile at her, and she reached across and took his hand. He looked and saw that she had turned to face him, ignoring the procession, her face open and welcoming. He squeezed her hand, warm against his palm, but, as she moved a little closer, he felt his phone buzz in his pocket.
He disengaged his hand and took it out.
“What is it?”
He looked down at the display. “Ziggy.”
“Wants to know if we want mustard.”
Milton put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
There was no reply, just the background noise of the carnival.
“Ziggy?”
Still nothing.
Milton craned his neck, looking through the crowd. The throng on the sidewalk was thick and deep, and Milton couldn’t see Ziggy. He looked over to the hot dog stall, but it was obscured by two girls on the shoulders of their male friends. The view cleared as they swayed out of the way. The vendor was serving someone else. Ziggy wasn’t there.
Milton listened and heard Ziggy’s voice. He was protesting, the words muffled and unclear, but the tone unmistakable: fear.
His face must have given away his concern. Izzy put her hand on his biceps and looked at him.
“Ziggy?”
Still nothing.
Bachman.
It must have been him.
He didn’t know what to do. Bachman might be taunting him, drawing him away from Izzy so that he could come around and collect her when he was out of the way. It would be safer to retreat, to take her with him and go somewhere safe, to go somewhere so he could see him coming.
But Ziggy.
What about him?
“What?” Izzy mouthed.
He held onto her hand and tugged her with him.
He pushed through the scrum to the truck.
“What is it, John?” she said.
He shouldered right down the middle of a clutch of drunken jocks, probably lost from the Quarter, and reached the hot dog stand. There was no sign of Ziggy. No sign of Bachman, either. There was a metal fence behind the stand, and he clambered up it, hauling himself above the level of the crowd and scanning again. He turned back to Izzy. She was looking at him with a concerned expression on her face. He turned to the north, and, just maybe, saw a flash of scarlet before the crowd congealed around it and scrubbed it out.
Ziggy was wearing red.
“John, what? What is it?”
He dropped down to the ground, took her hand again, and hurried north, tugging her along with him. A clutch of drunken girls were whirling and spinning, their drinks splashing out of their cups. He edged between them, picking up his pace as soon as they were clear of them. It was a little easier to move against the side of the buildings, but the maelstrom of noise and light was disorientating.
He scanned, looking for Ziggy or Bachman. Faces blended together in the mêlée, difficult to make out as he moved through them, but none caught his attention.
Izzy stopped, tugging back at Milton’s arm.
“I’m not moving another step until you tell me what it is.”
“Ziggy is in trouble.”
“Milton!”
It was a loud, desperate cry.
He pushed and shoved his way through the crowd.
“Milton!”
He heard it above the clamour of the carnival, and turned in its direction. There was a patch of empty land between two derelict buildings, the ground rising up to a wire-mesh fence and, beyond that, a road. There was a gap in the fence and, behind that, he saw Ziggy. Bachman was next to him. It took a moment to realise that it was him. He was we
aring a ball cap pulled down low over his eyes, and a leather jacket. His hand was inside his jacket, right where a shoulder holster would leave the butt of a pistol, and, as Milton watched, he grabbed Ziggy around the neck and threw him into the back of a waiting car.
Milton surged ahead, barging through the middle of another group of rowdy jocks.
One of them stepped in front of him. “No need to push, dude.”
The man reached out with his left hand. There was no time for negotiation. Milton hit him in the gut, doubling him over as he brought the point of his elbow down, hard, on the back of his head. It was a blindingly quick motion, knocking the man out and dropping him to the ground.
“Milton!” Izzy said, reaching for him.
Two of the man’s friends were in the way. They had watched Milton’s demonstration, and now they regarded him with unmasked fear. They braced themselves, nerves obvious, but they didn’t move. Drunken bravado. Very inconvenient.
“Get out of the way.”
Milton shuffled to the right, tried to edge around them, but they found the confidence to block him. The man Milton had knocked down was starting to come around, too, on his knees and reaching for his friend’s arm to help him to his feet.
Milton watched over their shoulders as Bachman went around to the front of the car and got inside.
There was a squeal of rubber on asphalt and then the car was gone, disappearing into the night.
#
MILTON EXPLAINED what had happened as he and Izzy took a taxi back to Salvation Row. She listened quietly and, when he was finished, she put a hand on his knee. She said it wasn’t his fault. He knew that was right, that it wasn’t—that it would have been impossible to ward against someone like Bachman if he had it in his mind to come after him—but it didn’t make him feel any better. Ziggy was in terrible danger, might already even be dead, and it had happened on his watch. It was the second time, too.
Once might have been an accident, although Milton didn’t believe in accidents.
Twice was starting to look a lot like negligence.
The taxi pulled up outside the house. The lights were burning, welcoming, and he thought about the meal that he had been promised. Elsie had prepared gumbo, Izzy had told him, a proper Louisianan meal to thank him for what he had done.
