Strong Justice

by Jon Land

  “No, I’m not. And my guess is whatever it is you’re holding inside, you wouldn’t tell her either. Doesn’t exactly help us figure what to tell your dad, though, does it?”

  “Why we have to tell him anything?”

  “Because I’d expect the same. Discussion might come easier if I could help you make sense of it for him.”

  Dylan huffed out his breath, started playing with the buttons on his shirt. “He’s away, down in New Orleans. On business.”

  “He said that?”

  “Far as I remember. I didn’t have anyone else to call.”

  Caitlin made sure he could see her smile. “I’m kind of glad for that.”

  “You haven’t been coming around as much. My brother misses you.”

  “Does he now?”

  “He smiles more when you’re around. Only time pretty much.”

  Caitlin felt something heavy settle in her throat. “You taking care of Luke while your dad’s away?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Think about that before you skipped school and got yourself arrested?”

  “Something else I was thinking about.”

  “That girl the police saw you with, I’m guessing.”

  Dylan kept his eyes from her, saying nothing.

  “San Antonio PD’s still looking for her.”

  Dylan turned back her way. “Why?”

  “Captain Alonzo’s not about to let go.”

  “On account of my dad?”

  “Part of the reason, yeah. Other part is cops see a couple of kids running around the east side of the city in the middle of the day, first thing comes to their mind is drugs. Since they didn’t find any on you, they’ll set their sights on the girl.”

  Dylan’s dark eyes widened, then narrowed again. “Drugs got nothing to do with this.”

  “What does?”

  “Maria—”

  “Maria?”

  “That’s the girl’s name,” Dylan said, squirming in his seat as if the upholstery was boiling his skin. “She was running away, from men a lot worse than my dad ever was. Men who stole her and put her in some kind of human stockyard so they could sell her to freaks to have sex with.”

  Caitlin felt her heart skip a beat and leaned forward in the driver’s seat. “Maybe you better start at the beginning.”

  6

  NEW ORLEANS; THE PRESENT

  Cort Wesley Masters raised his hands in the air, submitting to a frisk by Frank Branca Jr.’s bodyguards as Frankie himself looked on grinning.

  “Tell me something,” Frankie said to him in the living room section of the St. Louis Hotel’s Fleur de Lis Suite. “In prison, did anybody try and touch you?”

  “They knew better.” Two of the three bodyguards backed off while the third looked on, their job complete, and Cort Wesley lowered his arms. Bright sunlight streamed in through the open balcony blinds, making him squint. “Just like you, Junior.”

  The glistening white smile slipped from Frank Branca Jr.’s face. “Nobody calls me that anymore. It’s Mr. Branca now.”

  “Sorry, your father’s the only Mr. Branca I know,” Cort Wesley said, eyeing the figure frozen in a wheelchair placed by the open French doors that offered a sprawling view of the French Quarter overlooking Iberville Street. Katrina had mostly spared this area from the catastrophic damage still afflicting so much of the city. And those trees that had been uprooted had all been replaced now, though the new shadows were substantially smaller than the old, more sun left to bake the asphalt in unforgiving fashion. The suite, meanwhile, was furnished exquisitely with handmade traditional furniture upholstered in rich fabric with perfect stitching. It smelled of the lush foliage sprouting from Iberville Street beyond and was bathed in light spilling in through the windows and exposed balcony.

  “Five years is a long time, Masters.”

  “Six now.”

  “Things have a way of changing, don’t they?”

  Cort Wesley glanced again toward Frank Branca Sr. The last time they met, Frank Sr. was still playing golf and tennis and worked out every day. A stroke had robbed him of that and plenty more, confining him to a wheelchair wired to portable monitors and breathing with the help of a ventilator. The elder Branca wheezed occasionally through a mouth that no longer functioned. His skin was pale and sallow, the work of some twisted artist, it looked like, redrawing his visage in milk on dried parchment a stiff wind might tear. His once thick flesh had melted away to leave him almost skeletal. But the old man’s eyes were the worse. Utterly blank and unresponsive, lacking the very capacity for thought and flicker of amusement Cort Wesley had always seen in them, belying the murderous and brutal business he had chosen for himself.

  Frank Jr. noticed the direction of his stare. “My old man survives every attempt by New York and Chicago to take him out and look how he ends up. Fucking shame. You know how many times I thought about taking a pillow to him myself?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I talk to him, something tells me he’s still there. I dress him myself every day. Get his tie tied the way he likes, even stick his old .38 in a holster he bought off a collector claimed it belonged to Dutch Schultz. Just having him around gives me the kind of security I’ll never have again once he’s gone.”

  The Branca crime family had pulled out of Texas a few years into Cort Wesley’s stay inside the brutal Huntsville prison known as The Walls. A combination of violent Mexican drug mobs moving into the state, along with the return of organized crime to New Orleans in Katrina’s wake, had chased them back to their roots here and in southern Florida. They had rented this suite on a permanent basis because, according to Frank Jr., his father had always enjoyed the view.

  “Come on, Masters, take a load off,” the new head of the Branca crime family told Cort Wesley, plopping himself down on a cream-colored couch with cushions thicker than clouds.

  Cort Wesley took the chair opposite him, hating the moment. Last thing he wanted to do was come to the Branca family, especially under Frank Jr.’s auspices, for the money they owed him. After what went down yesterday, though, he needed it and needed it fast.

  7

  SAN ANTONIO; THE DAY BEFORE

  Marianna Silvaro, the social services worker assigned to his case, had been waiting for him in the health club lobby when he emerged still sweaty from his workout.

  “Didn’t know you were a member, Ms. Silvaro,” he asked, throwing her a smile. He’d focused on back and chest today, leaving his muscles straining the bounds of his shirt. The muscle heads and juice monkeys loved the mirrors that rimmed the free-weight room upstairs. Cort Wesley hated them for the message of age they imparted. He never thought of such things until his boys fell to his responsibility. Suddenly the creases and worry lines he hadn’t even noticed before reminded him of every bad grade and missed parent conference with this teacher or that. He looked around the room filled with clanking iron and grinding cable and wondered how many other men here had a couple kids they were still getting to know.

  More recently, Cort Wesley had started wearing sunscreen, and last week he’d used the gift certificate to a hair salon Caitlin Strong had given him for his birthday before it expired. The only difference he could see, besides the price, was a shampooing, and he hated the feeling of someone else wetting down his hair and running their hands through the lather. Then the stylist asked him if he wanted the gray at the temples touched up.

  So this is what raising kids does to you . . .

  He told the stylist to leave the gray and decided to go back to a barber.

  Silvaro pushed her considerable bulk up from a chair that creaked under the strain, making Cort Wesley instantly regret his comment. Her skin, colored a deep shade of beige from too much makeup, seemed stretched to its limit by the simplest of gestures. But as his Department of Social Services representative she’d been mostly fair with him and deserved better than the admonishing stares those coming and going through the door cast her.

  “Yo
u’re a tough man to track down, Mr. Masters. And you missed our appointment yesterday.”

  “I plum forgot, ma’am.”

  “You also forgot to file your means of support forms, along with proof of income and employment with the department.”

  “I’ll get to it right away. That’s a promise.” Cort Wesley noticed her eyes straying to the tattoos that dominated both his shoulders. “You like my tats, ma’am?”

  “I recognize the skull and crossbones,” Marianna Silvaro noted, studying him closer. “What’s the other one?”

  Cort Wesley angled his body so she could better see his left shoulder. “Bloody dagger being stuck back into its scabbard.”

  “Oh,” Silvaro said, face wrinkling in displeasure. “Mr. Masters, I want you to understand how precarious your situation is becoming.”

  “Precarious?”

  “You need me to define the word for you?”

  “I was in the Gulf War, ma’am. I think I know what precarious means.”

  She took a step closer to him, Cort Wesley not at all used to someone narrowing the gap that way. “In this case it means you’re in very real danger of losing custody of your sons.”

  The sweat cooling on Cort Wesley seemed to freeze in an instant, making his pores feel as if someone had jammed icicles in them.

  “Mr. Masters,” Silvaro continued, “since you were granted provisional custody, you haven’t complied with a single request from the department. I’ve stood up for you as best I can, but a man with your past has to expect additional scrutiny.”

  “What kind of past would that be, ma’am, I mean, considering I’ve never been rightfully convicted of a crime in my life?”

  “The lack of a female influence in your sons’ lives is also a concern.”

  “Since their mother got murdered, you mean.”

  Silvaro still didn’t back off, leaving Cort Wesley feeling tense and awkward. He’d never known a man tough enough to stand up to him this way, and here he was cowering before a social worker as wide as she was tall.

  Another thing raising kids will do to you, Cort Wesley thought.

  “I’m on your side, Mr. Masters. I’ve interviewed your boys and have no reason to believe you’re anything but a good father to them. But that does nothing about the glaring omissions in your file we need to resolve before I’m forced to make a decision none of us wants. What are you doing to make a living, for example?”

  “Been doing a bit of bodyguarding.”

  “Is that how you put five people in the hospital in the past six months?”

  “Sometimes bodyguarding requires it. An occupational hazard, I guess.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “The men who hired me to protect them are just fine,” Cort Wesley said by way of explanation. “I’d call that a job well done.”

  “I’m not sure my department would agree. I tracked you down to tell you that you need to better demonstrate you’re financially capable of taking care of your sons. Am I making myself clear?” Silvaro asked, eyes lingering on his tattooed shoulders once more.

  “You like my tats that much, ma’am, you should get your own.”

  “Mr. Masters, I don’t see—”

  “They’re Disney press-ons. My youngest boy picked them up when we were in the park a few months back and stuck ’em on me yesterday.” He turned sideways again, giving Silvaro a better look at the dagger. “See how when I flex the muscle, it looks like the knife’s moving?”

  Marianna Silvaro looked down, then away.

  “Those Disney folks are really something, aren’t they?” Cort Wesley asked her.

  8

  NEW ORLEANS; THE PRESENT

  “You said this was about business,” Frank Branca Jr. was telling him.

  “That’s right.”

  “Because we’re about to make a move back into Texas, you know. Cut a deal with the Mexican cartels to move product for them.”

  “That’s not the business I came about.”

  “No?”

  Cort Wesley pictured the lavish garden beyond the window to help steady his breathing. “We had a deal when I went in. You were supposed to take care of my kids and their mother.”

  “Me?”

  “The family.”

  “Which in those days would mean my dad. You got a beef, Masters, you’ll have to take it up with him. Hey, Dad, you taking visitors today?”

  A thick, gurgly wheeze emanated from the old man’s mouth, frothy drool emerging to dribble down his chin.

  “Guess not.” Frank Jr. turned back to Cort Wesley. “Guess you’ll have to come back, try again tomorrow.”

  “I just want what’s coming to me, Frankie.”

  “Heard the mother of your kids got herself killed.”

  “Through no fault of her own.”

  “No, I’m guessing that was yours and, look at this, now you got all the responsibilities of a dad. Got a couple of kids myself, a boy and a girl, with my wife, Rosie. You remember Rosie?”

  Cort Wesley nodded, but recalled instead the various showgirls and prostitutes with whom Frank Jr. kept company. He was popular with them for his power more than his looks, which were never much to speak of. He had pearl-white teeth, wore his coarse black hair slicked back with hourly applications of gel, eyes he tried to make hard, and skin so smooth and unmarked that the Branca family soldiers used to call him “Francie” behind his back. Since he was insulated under the protective umbrella provided by his father, they’d never think of saying it to his face any more than the women he bedded would dare comment on his physical shortcomings.

  “Rosie loves Texas,” Frankie Jr. continued. “Claims she hasn’t been happy since we left there. The kids too. But the schools are better here. Cost me some green to get them into the best parochials. Fifteen and my son’s got to wear a tie and dress shirt every day, you believe that.”

  “I’d like to be able to afford the same for mine.”

  “Good luck.”

  Cort Wesley turned his gaze on Frank Branca Sr., the angle of the sun making the old man’s eyes water. “Why do you leave him out there like that?”

  “He loves the sun.”

  “Looks like he’s in pain. Or maybe it’s because he knows his son is a low-down dirty welcher.”

  Frank Jr. shifted in his seat quickly enough to draw the attention of his bodyguards. “Talk like that’s a good way to make your kids orphans.”

  “You really think me not having a gun makes any difference?”

  “Maybe you didn’t notice my bodyguards are ex–Army Rangers, some shit like that, just like you.”

  Cort Wesley glanced at the three men again, having trouble picturing that. “I was Special Forces, and I just want what’s coming to me, Frankie.”

  “Don’t we all? Only solution I can see is you coming back to work for us, like I said before.”

  “Already told you I’m not interested. Sorry.”

  Frankie Branca leaned back, stretching his arms out so they cracked at the elbows before lacing his fingers behind his head. “You go Boy Scout on me or something? ’Cause I heard stuff about you hooking up with a Texas Ranger. First time I hear it said, I’m thinking can’t be, since no way Cort Wesley Masters is a faggot. Least he wasn’t before he went inside. Then I hear it’s a woman Ranger. True or false?”

  “That she’s a woman or a Ranger?”

  “I knew you before you became a wise ass, Masters. Trust me, it doesn’t suit you.”

  Cort Wesley jammed a hand into the pocket of his jeans, causing Frankie Branca to flinch and his bodyguards to tense. But all he came out with was a piece of paper.

  “I wrote you a bill. Back payment for services rendered, just like I said.”

  He rose from his chair and extended the paper toward Branca. When Frankie didn’t take it, Cort Wesley dropped it in his lap.

  Frankie acted as if it wasn’t there, pretended he couldn’t see it. Crossed his legs so it would slip to the floor.

 
“Oops,” he said, making no move to retrieve it.

  Cort Wesley remained standing, hands coiling by his sides, unable to get the thought of the punk’s father, who’d always treated him square, roasting outside. Then, ignoring Frank Jr.’s bodyguards, he started toward the balcony.

  “Where the fuck you think you’re going?” Frankie asked him.

  “Get your father out of the sun.”

  A knock fell on the suite door, one of the bodyguards moving to open it.

  “You don’t mind, I got another appointment.”

  “This won’t take long,” Cort Wesley said, kneeling in front of Frank Branca Sr., ignoring his son.

  Pffffft . . . Pffffft . . . Pfffffft . . .

  The sound alerted Cort Wesley to what was happening an instant before the first bodyguard’s body was blown backward, midsection shredded by silenced submachine-gun fire. The three gunmen who stormed the suite focused on Frank Jr.’s other two bodyguards, giving Cort Wesley the opportunity to tear the old man’s .38 from Dutch Schultz’s holster.

  The revolver felt strange in his hand, just six shots, he reminded himself, as the three gunmen started blasting away at the weaponless Frank Jr., who’d taken refuge on the floor behind the couch. Cort Wesley lurched back inside the suite, still unseen until he dropped the first man with a pair of headshots. A second spun his way to be greeted by two bullets that found his left cheek and right eye, while the third ducked back into the dining room portion of the suite, opening fire wildly.

  The bullets stitched a jagged design through the balcony doors’ glass, just missing Frank Sr. who reacted not at all. But the mere thought of the old man nearly perishing in the spray was enough to fuel Cort Wesley into motion. He hurdled the couch, ready to shoot as soon as the final gunmen twisted around from his wall cover to right his barrel.

  The man appeared just as expected, thinking the advantage to be his, never anticipating Cort Wesley to be right upon him. Cort Wesley saw the shock and fear in his eyes as he shot him in the throat and chest, the man’s final barrage stitching a jagged design across the ceiling that sliced a crystal chandelier from its mount and sent it smashing downward.