“I don’t know how much time it takes. I mean…I don’t know what he needs to do to get it ready.”
“That’s why you’re gonna be all over him come sunup. Don’t let that motherfucker out of your sight till it’s done. I’ll stall Professor Bitch.”
“Joseph, you know I didn’t want to do this. If there was more time, if we could still use the ward—”
“What did I tell you, Claude? Not one goddamn word! I don’t want to know. Call me from the doc’s and give me an ETA.”
“I will. But, just…I didn’t want to do this!”
Claude waited for another angry admonishment. He knew how reckless it was to ignore a direct order, but he couldn’t stop himself. He had to let someone, anyone, understand his hand had been forced. He wasn’t the deviant they’d said he was at the psych ward. He was his father’s son, but that didn’t mean he’d inherited the worst of the man’s qualities.
Claude wanted to say all these things. But the phone was dead in his hand.
There was no one to talk to. Abellard wouldn’t listen. Tomorrow, he’d make the doctor listen. Yes. Claude Sherman wasn’t the only one who’d dirtied his hands in this operation, even if he was called upon to do the worst of it.
Oh, yes. He’d have plenty to say tomorrow, once he’d impressed upon Roque the urgency of harvesting the material so they could make a viable delivery. He would make Philip Roque understand. And when the time came, after Professor Guillory got what she wanted and the deadline was met, Claude would force Joseph Fucking Abellard to listen as well. And wouldn’t he be surprised to learn what Claude had been up to behind his back!
All of that would happen in due time. But right now, Claude had no one to confide in other than the impassive neon letters high above. And no one to distract his thoughts from that terrible bloody bundle in the trunk.
13.
Rusty kept a boot on the gas and the AC blasting as he powered the Mustang westward along the interstate. It was a smashingly bright Sunday morning, the sun burning with such unyielding intensity he felt glad not to be among the sizable portion of the French Quarter’s inhabitants to awaken with a hangover.
The humidity had kicked in shortly after sunrise and showed no sign of abating. The Mustang’s temperature gauge read eighty-eight, and it was barely ten o’clock.
He’d arisen from his bed at the Cornstalk feeling no more rested than when he’d set his head on the pillow six hours before. After fortifying himself with some chicory coffee at Cafe du Monde, he called Prosper just as the elder magician was leaving home to open up the Emporium.
Rusty walked him through yesterday’s events—excluding any mention of the unidentified corpse—and tried to spin his contact with Dan Hubbard in an optimistic light. Prosper sounded more weary than disappointed to hear that no tangible clues had surfaced. Rusty promised to check in again tonight, after he’d spoken with Joseph Abellard. The call ended on a sour note, doing little to brighten his mood.
So today’s excursion to Vacherie felt like just the ticket. Get out of the city for a few hours, inhale some pungent bayou air, and at the very least lay eyes on the one person most likely to shed some meaningful information on Marceline’s whereabouts.
Just don’t walk in there pegging him as a suspect, Rusty cautioned himself, watching a chain of faded yellow dashes on the pavement disappear beneath the Mustang’s hood. For all I know, the man is just as worried as I am. Let him help, if he can.
That felt like a prudent approach. It was only fair to take Monday’s disdain for Abellard with a grain of salt. Prosper’s too, for that matter.
Give him the benefit of the doubt. If he proves unworthy of it, go on the offensive.
This strategic line of thinking occupied Rusty as he kept racking up miles away from the NOLA city limit and sped closer to his destination. Little else competed for his attention. He wasn’t driving through an especially picturesque part of Louisiana. Countless acres of green emptiness stretched out in all directions, with an occasional spit of brown muddy water snaking through the flattened landscape.
Rusty didn’t know exactly when he’d entered into the region designated as Cajun Country. Five miles back he’d gotten off the westbound I-10, moving south and crossing the Mississippi on an arched suspension bridge before turning west again on a two lane byway. The few dwellings he spotted from his mobile vantage point appeared little more than embellished lean-tos occupying bits of grassy land at a safe distance from the road.
A faded sign overgrown with moss welcomed him to Vacherie. Stopping at an intersection, Rusty soaked up the vista of Southern rural poverty all around him.
On the roadside to his left was a crumbling red brick edifice with three smashed windows and a hand-painted sign reading “Sabur Barber Shop” tilting at a defeated angle toward a haggard plot of grass by the entrance. Across the street stood a metallic shed, its front door blocked by a forlorn three-seater couch whose leather cushions had been slashed in too many spots to count. Another blocky structure stood catty-corner to the barber shop, so covered with weeds and vines only a few random patches of cinderblock remained visible.
Despite the obvious economic blight, Rusty didn’t find this a particularly depressing environment. Within an urban setting, the same tableau would have been overpoweringly downbeat. But out in these swampy reaches, Vacherie held a kind of eerie mystique. It was like an inverted Atlantis arisen from the muck, long ago abandoned by whoever had once called it home. The sole inhabitants were mosquitoes, floating in tiny black clouds through the still morning air.
If this is the kingdom Joseph Abellard rules over, how much of a threat can he be?
Buoyed by that encouraging thought, Rusty drove through the intersection and into Vacherie.
• • •
The Carnival Casino wasn’t hard to find. Two steel columns reached into the sun-scorched air, well over a hundred feet tall. Atop them sat a rectangular white sign with bold red letters advertising the only legal gaming operations within a twenty mile radius.
Rusty pulled into the Carnival’s gravel parking lot, assessing the layout. On the lot’s far side stood a gas station no longer in operation. The marquee above the cashier’s booth had long ago been demolished by weather or vandalism. Two rows of pumps stood abandoned, their hoses torn away and reserves of unsold gasoline probably siphoned off years ago.
The rest of the lot lay mostly empty. A trio of eighteen-wheelers filled out one corner, with a handful of smaller vehicles parked in haphazard formation.
Rusty backed into the spot closest to the casino’s entrance, figuring a quick getaway might prove desirable. The digital clock on the Mercedes’ dash read 10:43. He killed the engine and got out, taking a moment to stretch his legs and size up his surroundings.
Like its grander counterparts in the Nevada desert, the Carnival had no windows. That’s where the similarities to Vegas ended. The Carnival made no attempt at enticing customers with a flashy facade. It was a steel and concrete block with all the charm of a machine shop, hunkered low over the parking lot without a single touch of neon to attract the eye of passing motorists.
Rusty noticed a surveillance camera pointed down at him from an archway above the entrance. The lens turned with an audible whirr.
Not running on auto, he thought. Someone’s operating it, and getting a good close look at me.
That thought rattled him until he remembered no one was expecting him here today. The camera was a standard security precaution, quite possibly for show purposes only. For all he knew, the man he’d come to see wasn’t even on the premises right now.
Rusty pulled open the door and stepped inside.
The first sensory impression to take hold was an overpowering smell of cigarette smoke and discarded butts. It was like stepping into a massive ashtray that hadn’t been dumped out since Huey Long occupied the governor’s mansion. A central air conditioning system was pumping full blast, lowering the temperature to meat locker levels but accomplishin
g little in the way of filtration.
Rusty stepped through a metal detector, watching an overhead light go green. He kept walking into the darkened foyer. A mountainous security guard planted on a stool gave him a cold stare. Whether that look communicated hostility or a dearth of cognitive function, Rusty couldn’t say. He kept walking, turning a corner onto the casino floor.
The entire space throbbed within a murky crimson glow. A bar stretched along the wall to his immediate right. The bartender stood with his back to the stools, engrossed in a dog race being broadcast on a flatscreen TV screwed into the wall.
Rusty moved into the gaming area. The Carnival offered limited options. Two blackjack tables, a third for poker. A row of slot machines blinked and bleeped against the wall opposite the bar. Several zombie-like silhouettes shimmered before them, relentlessly feeding coins. Bobby Womack crooned on the PA.
A glassy-eyed gentleman in a CAT Diesel cap was playing blackjack by himself at the nearest table, slumped over third base with an expression that bespoke many hours without sleep. Rusty joined the game, seating himself at first base. The dealer, a black youth whose wispy mustache didn’t quite succeed in making him look old enough to order a drink, swept up his twenty dollar bill from the felt and replaced it with ten yellow chips.
Winning the first hand, Rusty quickly lost the next three in a row. Mr. CAT Diesel wasn’t faring much better. It was a single deck game, something not found in any but the most bargain basement gaming houses. Counting cards was childishly easy with one deck, and Rusty wondered why the Carnival offered the option.
Rusty played a half dozen hands before he realized the dealer was cheating. It wasn’t the most sophisticated job of card manipulation he had ever witnessed, by a long shot. He’d seen some of the very best in the world during his time in Vegas, and had himself mastered a broad range of card tricks under Prosper’s tutelage.
The wispy-mustached dealer was employing a basic blind shuffle. At the end of every third hand, he gathered up all the cards and performed four standard riffle shuffles. Then he offered the deck to either of the two players for them to cut it. Taking the cards back into his possession, he proceeded with two more riffle shuffles before dealing out the next hand.
All standard enough, but Rusty noticed how the dealer allowed a bed of about ten cards to fall from his hand prior to each riffle. Using his ring fingers and thumbs, the dealer separated the cards into two discrete sections and then laid them back together in such a way as to give the impression they’d been properly shuffled.
Except they hadn’t. The deck retained the exact same order as during the previous hand, telling the dealer where all the Aces and face cards lay.
The average player probably wouldn’t notice this cheat, despite the clumsiness of its execution. It was a wonder Mr. CAT Diesel could read the cards in his own hand, given the glazed sheen of his bloodshot orbs. But Rusty saw it plain as day, and stuck around long enough to lose a few more hands just so he could witness it one more time.
Who taught you your trade, junior? I wouldn’t try that in Vegas, if you ever get there. Hard to shuffle with two broken hands.
Rusty flipped his remaining $2 chip to the dealer and stepped away from the table. He ambled over to the bar and cleared his throat loudly to wrest the bartender’s attention away from the dog races.
“Abita Amber. In the bottle, if you got it.”
The bartender, impeccably dressed in a champagne tux and sporting silver wings of hair above each ear giving him a hawklike aspect, served up a mug of Abita Amber from the tap. He took Rusty’s five-spot from the bar and offered no change.
“Mr. Abellard in?”
The bartender’s tufted brows, also silver, lifted high enough to bring some animation to his face.
“Who’s that now?” he asked in a pack-a-day rasp.
“Joseph Abellard. You must know him, I understand he’s the proprietor of this fine establishment.”
The bartender grabbed a rag and started wiping down a glass that did not appear in need of cleaning.
“Now why would you be asking?”
“I’d like to have a word with him, that’s all.”
“Uh huh. And what is it you want to talk about?”
“A mutual friend.”
The bartender chuckled softly, working the rag over another spotless glass.
“Something funny about that?”
“You and Mr. Abellard having any mutual friends, man. That’s good for my first laugh of the day.”
“It’s no joke. I’ve come quite a way to talk to him. Won’t take much of his time, but if he’s here I think I’ll stick around till he sees me.”
The bartender’s eyes flashed upward, past Rusty’s shoulder. An almost tactile silence took over as the juke switched to “Cry Cry Cry” by Bobby Blue Bland. Rusty felt but couldn’t see a presence just behind him. He knew the colossal security guard had walked over from his stool.
“Will I have better luck with him?” Rusty asked the bartender, who laughed again.
“I doubt it. Antoine don’t play.”
Rusty turned and looked up into the guard’s impassive face.
“Tell Abellard I want to see him, Antoine.”
No reply came from the guard other than a quiver in one cheek. Rusty felt the bartender’s hand on his shoulder but didn’t turn back to acknowledge it.
“Tell him it’s about Marceline Lavalle. I’m pretty sure that will get his attention.”
The hand on his shoulder tightened momentarily, then pulled away. The bartender gave a small nod to the guard. Rusty watched Antoine exhale through both nostrils like he’d smelled something bad, then turn and stomp away. He disappeared into the darkened hallway behind the poker tables.
“See?” Rusty said, swiveling around. “I told you we had a friend in common.”
The bartender didn’t reply, standing with his gaze directed away from where Rusty sat. Like he no longer existed, or soon wouldn’t.
Rusty shrugged, deciding he wasn’t in the mood for more idle chitchat anyway. He settled in to nip at his beer, figuring whatever was going to happen next would probably take some time.
He was wrong. Less than three sips later the guard lumbered back over to the bar. He jerked his head a few centimeters to the left, indicating that’s where Rusty should direct himself.
“Is he pointing me toward Mr. Abellard’s office or the exit?” Rusty asked the bartender.
“Does it make a damn difference, far as what you’re gonna do?”
“Guess not. Thanks for the beer.”
Rusty followed the guard across the casino toward the hallway, feeling every eye in the room on his back. The bartender, the cheating dealer, even Mr. CAT Diesel—they were all clocking his progress. What they were thinking, he couldn’t guess.
He didn’t have much time to ponder it before stepping into a narrow hallway lit only by strings of Christmas tree lights along both sides of the floor. Barely discerning the security guard’s bulk as he followed in the darkness, Rusty almost bumped into him when they reached the end of the hall.
Another door stood on the right, open just a crack to allow a thin vertical line of light to spill through.
The guard knocked three times, almost inaudibly. The juke wasn’t nearly as loud on this side of the building. Rusty figured some serious sound insulation had been installed into the walls surrounding the gaming area.
He doubted anyone on the other side could hear the knock. But the guard must have picked up some reply, because he pushed the door open and moved aside to allow entrance.
Rusty stepped into the back office, wincing slightly at the brightness of the overhead track lighting.
Seated in a plush leather chair behind a long steel desk resembling a prison mess hall table, Joseph Abellard glanced up from a stack of money nearly two feet tall.
“Start talking, motherfucker.”
14.
“I’m looking for Marceline Lavalle. I think you know wher
e she is.”
Those words left Rusty’s mouth reflexively, before he had time to appraise this room and the man staring him down.
The office was a simple affair, as unadorned as the rest of the Carnival. Square room, twenty feet by twenty. Walls covered with dull wood paneling. Two cheap black lamps straight from the Ikea catalog, both burning but superfluous under the glare of the overhead fluorescent lights. A bulky metal safe with a combination lock took up an entire corner.
Though seated, Joseph Abellard filled the room with a kind of heft most men could only achieve when standing at full height. Large head crowned with short-cropped graying curls, virtually no neck connected it to the brawny torso of an aging prizefighter. His complexion was a light mocha shade suggesting a long ancestral history of mixed race, common among families of Creole lineage.
Abellard’s hands, which looked like they could hold five baseballs apiece, were both filled with stacks of cash secured with rubber ties. The right moved one approved stack to a small pile on the side of the desk closest to the safe, while the left pulled a fresh stack from a larger pile for inspection.
Abellard nodded to the security guard. Rusty heard the door close softly behind him, but he couldn’t tell if Antoine had left the room or not.
“Here to talk about my woman, huh?”
“I’m here to talk about Marceline Lavalle.”
“No shit. That’s what Antoine told me. Know what I said to him?”
Rusty didn’t hazard a guess. Abellard leaned back in his chair, showing as much concern for the money as a pile of old newspapers.
“I said he had to be outta his motherfucking mind, interrupt my count with nonsense like that.”
“I’m not sure he’s smart enough to be crazy,” Rusty said, taking another step. The insult elicited a dull grunt from behind, telling him what he’d intended to learn without turning around to look. Antoine was still in the room.
Abellard smiled broadly, and Rusty saw in an instant how this man might easily attract a woman whose better sense told her to stay a mile away. The smile completely altered the landscape of his roughhewn face.
Blind Shuffle Page 9
