The Blue Garou (Detective 'Cadillac' Holland Series Book 1)

by H Hiller

  “Why was that so important?”

  “Jim could tie her back to the gun runners in California and was going to use her to link Biggie to them. He also figured he use her to give any testimony he wanted rather than get her cousin involved in all of this. She didn’t even know what Biggie had in the locker.”

  “Apparently that didn’t work out the way you wanted.”

  “Hell, no,” Bumper spat out. “I went out there one day and the guns were gone. Biggie said not to worry about them. It was certainly good for him that they were gone, but Jim almost strangled me when I told him what had happened. He had lost the only thing he had Biggie dead to rights on, and any control he had over Georgia. He had to start making up excuses to keep the FBI from shutting us down while he tried to figure out some other way to justify what we were doing.”

  “What did he come up with? The guns have been gone for quite a while, right?”

  “How do you know that?” Biggie stopped his story long enough to realize I knew something he thought I had no way of knowing. Now he had to worry what else I knew. He was obviously saving details, like names and dates, he could try to negotiate a plea deal with when I finally did slap the cuffs on him. Those details were useless if I already knew them.

  “You told me not to come back unless I could make a case against you. I did my homework. So what did Gabb decide you should do next?”

  “He started pressing me to get more involved in the operation, and Biggie was cool with that. I started handling more of the business side and less of the bodyguard stuff he didn’t need anyway. I was supposed to find out where he was getting his money and what he was spending it on. All I found out was he was lousy with money and spent it on this place as fast as he could get it from John or anybody else.”

  “What did Gabb have to say about that?”

  “Gabb told me I had to figure out a way to get Biggie out of the picture. He figured that if he had an informant actually running the studio then the FBI would have to let him keep running the operation. He was sure he could make his career out of this.”

  “Sounds like he lost interest in putting Biggie back in jail.”

  “Maybe, but he didn’t lose any interest in getting rid of him. Jim wanted him dead, and I didn’t want to be the guy everyone came after when Biggie died.”

  “Sorry that didn’t work out for you,” I flashed him a smile. “So you borrowed Cisco’s idea about the dog. Who was going to suspect anyone if a dog killed him, right?”

  “Yeah,” Biggie readily admitted. “If they had shot the dog when it was still blue nobody would have figured out what happened.”

  “Probably not,” I now confessed. “You can thank my sister for that, too.”

  Bumper considered his options for a moment before he spoke again.

  “You know none of this matters, right? It is just my word against the FBI. Jim is going to get out on bail and he won’t go down easily. He will think nothing of making you disappear just to shut you up, just like he did your old man.”

  Bumper knew this was going to get my attention, and it did.

  “You don’t get to say something like that and not explain yourself.”

  “Like I said, I met Jim when we were doing house searches after Hurricane Katrina. The governor had reportedly issued an order to shoot to kill looters. The guys from NOPD were having none of that, but Jim came to me one afternoon and asked if I might be up for what he called 'zombie patrol.' What he had in mind was checking out the addresses of his brother’s clients and their friends late at night. If they had any supplies then they must have looted them. It sort of made sense, you know? He said we might catch more of them if we went around at night.”

  “Who approved this?” I was hoping it was SAC Conroy. And Gabb was right about using the cover of night. It was when we scheduled our raids when I worked in Iraq.

  “Nobody, as far as I ever knew. Like I said, everybody else thought the governor had lost her damn mind,” I could tell from the way he said this that it was also his first clue that things were not going to work out like Gabb had told him, but he went along anyway.

  “Tell me how this relates to my father.”

  “We had a half dozen of the shit-birds flex-cuffed in the back of a pickup truck like bags of trash. I believed we were going to drop them off at one of the evacuation centers to be shipped out of here, but Jim drove us out to a marsh and told me to pull them out of the truck. We lined them up on their knees with the truck headlights in their face. I thought he was just going to leave them there, but he opened up with an AK-47 he had taken off one of them. I had to help him toss the bodies into the water. Some weren't even dead yet. I was screaming at Jim that someone was going to find these guys, but he kept saying there were plenty of hungry alligators to clean up the mess.”

  “So, you came back and reported him, right?”

  I had heard rumors in the first months after I arrived here that exactly this sort of thing had happened. As an urban legend, vigilante justice satisfies our desire for stability, but as an actual police action it has no justification whatsoever. I doubt any cop or Federal agent in town during those dark hours had not at least considered similar acts, but that is where things like oaths, training, and an admittedly broken sense of humanity quieted those voices in their head. I also had the perspective of having seen what happens when the supposed forces of good are unleashed without rules or oversight and learned firsthand that the result is not security. It’s simply more chaos and mayhem.

  “That man is crazy. He swore he would kill me if I ever said anything. I believed him then, and I still do. Anyway, he got real nervous when we first saw each other in Los Angeles. He offered to make me the UC if I would go on keeping my mouth shut.”

  “So you traded this assignment for keeping your mouth shut about shooting some drug dealers and petty criminals? You still haven’t said how my father fit into this.”

  “He took me out there two more times. We probably killed thirty guys. Your old man must have figured something had to be up because nobody else was going on patrol after dark. Jim offered to let him ride along on the last trip we made. I have to give your dad credit though. He tried to stop Jim once we had the bangers lined up. Jim turned on him with that AK and the old man took off running. I have never seen a man that old run that fast. Jim let him get out in the water a ways and then sprayed a good dozen rounds after him. I heard him splash in the water. We came back and told everyone we had gotten separated in the dark.”

  “Did you actually see my father’s body?”

  “It was pitch black. I saw him fall after the muzzle flash and I heard him hit the water and then he didn’t make any noise. Gabb shot the others right after that.”

  “You said you were working with some of the SWAT cops, right?” I asked. These might have been the officers I had interviewed over the phone who had resigned or retired and relocated after the storm, and had uncharacteristically bad recollections about these patrols. One of them was Katie’s father.

  “A half dozen of them went out with us in the afternoon,” he confirmed. “But none of them went with us at night. I think they knew something bad was going on, but if they asked about your dad disappearing Jim talked to them and they never brought it up again. They kept their distance from us after that night. I was assigned to the Second District a couple of days later. I didn’t see Jim again until Los Angeles.”

  “And you two really thought you’d never get found out?” I did not want to let on to how well they had stalled the investigation I had begun years earlier. “Where, exactly, did you do these shootings?”

  “We took them out to some swamp south of Irish Bayou, near Highway 90. I went out there again a few months later and remember passing some old brick fort at the foot of a bridge on my way back to town. If you get me the immunity deal I can show you where the bodies are.”

  I almost threw up but was able to quell the urge. I was stumped on how to ever explain this to my mother. I knew
it would not be in a way that made her damn psychic seem, well, psychic about how close she and I were to my father all along. Irish Bayou is practically within sight of my mother’s house. Bumper had driven right past her driveway.

  “But, you know the crazy part? We are going to get away with it. I’ll deny everything I just said unless I get immunity. I just thought you should know what happened to your old man. Jim will get out on bail and kill us both if you try to pursue any of this.”

  “You’ve really thought this through haven't you? It's like you needed to prove to someone exactly how far you two could push things and get away with them. But you’ve been hiding behind your brother’s name and boss man’s skirts this whole time.”

  “You’re the one who thought he could take on an FBI Agent.” Bumper grinned at me and stood up. “What were you thinking?”

  “What I am thinking right now is that you would probably make anything up to try to barter your way out of the extortion and murder charges I already have you on And I am certain my word is going to mean a lot more to the prosecutor than yours ever will.”

  “Well let’s not forget your girlfriend and her assistant.”

  “You already said you had framed her for helping Biggie with the guns. You lack any evidence to tie her to Biggie or John’s murder, and you’ll have an uphill fight trying to sell the idea that Amanda Rhodes was involved in anything except paying a blackmailer.”

  “That won’t keep me from dragging their names into this if it will let me skate free. I will not go down for killing gang bangers, and I will not be the FBI’s fall guy to save face because of what someone like Jim Gabb pulled off.”

  “Why didn’t you go over Gabb’s head when things started spinning out of control again? You could have kept a lot of this from getting any messier.”

  “It wasn’t anything the FBI was going to busy itself with. Any time I argued with Jim about the case he reminded me of my involvement in that other thing.”

  “Nice euphemism.” I couldn’t believe this oaf had just summarized killing unarmed people, and my own father, as being “that other thing.”

  Bumper began to laugh. “You will never be able to use any of this. I’ll deny everything I just told you and I had all of the microphones and cameras turned off up here last night, so you got nothing. Nobody’s come to arrest me but you, and you haven’t done so. Why don’t you just get out of here and let me get back to what I was doing when you got here? And, for your sake, remember to stay away from Jim. And me in the future.”

  “Well I would, but I don’t have to.” I showed him the stray cell phone I had been toying with while we talked. “Did you know the FBI has the technology to make one of these into a bug?”

  “Yeah, it’s why I took yours away.” He thought about it a moment while I continued waving the phone. I had moved away from him and my back was now against the railing.

  The big man’s expression suddenly changed and he reached into his pocket. He came out with a long bladed flip-knife and lunged at me but was off balance and desperate. Bumper charged me, leaning over at the waist and leading with the blade. I shifted slightly and shoved my knee into his unprotected flank as he barreled past me in order to knock him down. He dropped the knife as his forearm caught the rail as he stumbled to the filthy floor.

  I instinctively pulled my handgun and aimed at the back of his head. I barely stopped myself before I fired two rounds of ten millimeter hollow points at the base of his skull. I have shot many other people I have had far less personal reason to kill.

  Bumper rolled over and looked up, facing the barrel of my gun. We both studied my trigger finger as it deliberated what to do next. I could say I didn’t pull the trigger because I saw myself in his face just then. Tulip would argue that my shooting men intent on harming civilians and our troops, but not actually engaged in doing so at the moment, was little different than rounding up known criminals and killing them before they could carry out further crimes. I had already debated this with myself, and had found a way to live with myself in the narrow space between what the Geneva Convention allowed me to do in a guerrilla war and what the Constitution requires me to do with a prisoner in New Orleans. I didn’t pull the trigger simply because I wanted him to face a longer and more public punishment than my own revenge.

  The sound of footsteps behind me made us both exhale.

  “Got a bit more than we were looking for.” Avery pressed his hand across the slide of my pistol. I stood up still fingering the trigger. SAC Conroy and three FBI agents busied themselves with arresting their suspect while Avery’s NOPD officers enjoyed the show. I holstered my pistol and engaged the safety. I handed the cell phone I had “found” to Conroy but neither of us felt like shaking one another’s hands.

  “Enough anyway. Do you believe him about the Katrina killings?”

  “Lot of things I believe about that asshole, but being a bad liar isn't one of them. You finally have the answer about Ralph, but you still have to settle up with the others involved in the dog case, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I took a deep breath and looked Avery in the eye. “And the other matters? What do you want to do about Amanda’s husband and the missing guns?”

  Avery had probably been giving these matters a lot of thought in the few moments he had known about them. He had apparently already made up his mind about both of them.

  “I’ll follow your lead. I can sleep at night not solving California’s crimes for them. Letting Conroy clean his own house has dividends we can both cash in down the road.”

  I sighed again and looked at his face. He did not hold my gaze. I stood up and followed him out of the building and into the bright mid-morning sun. My car was now blocked by the marked police cruisers and FBI vehicles of the various officers and Agents that had been waiting out here for Conroy’s signal to arrest his tainted Agent’s informant. I was just guessing that Gabb was already headed into custody.

  Reporters from the local television stations had been tipped off to the gathered police cars and had set up without understanding exactly what was happening. I am sure nobody told them this was all arranged to close down an undercover operation run by a corrupt FBI agent. Conroy probably hoped to use the informant’s cover story as a means of getting him out of here without too much fanfare. Conroy was about to learn what I had just discovered when it came to dealing with Bumper Jackson’s criminal brother: Nothing works out as you either hope or plan.

  I admit I might not have thought through the full range of possible consequences from using Arnold’s brother to plant the FBI’s cell phone in the VIP area the night before. It was an easy answer to a complex problem, and that part of the plan had worked rather well as it turned out. What I did not account for was how having him plant the phone might be interpreted by Arnold. He was intent on finding out who had killed Biggie and already had a grudge against his brother’s deceased benefactor’s bodyguard and successor. I wondered how he might have reacted to seeing Bumper in handcuffs had Bumper honored the brother’s contract.

  “Shit.”

  I began to run towards the car where Bumper sat in handcuffs, but Arnold had distance on me and was clearly on a mission. His hand came up with a heavy revolver and the next thing I knew he had fired three rounds into the back seat of the car at almost point blank range. Two FBI agents realized what was about to happen about the same time I had, but they chose to shoot Arnold rather than disarm the boy. They dropped the young man in his tracks before he could fire a fourth round and then scanned the crowd for any further threats. Arnold’s companions chose to blend into the fascinated and horrified crowd. Arnold’s brother and I locked eyes for a moment before he led the others away.

  “What the hell was that?” Avery was shouting at me when I began to pay attention to my surroundings again. I tore my eyes away from the youngster lying sprawled on the sun-warmed parking lot in a bloodied T-shirt to face my confused superior.

  “I had his brother plant the cell phone l
ast night. I guess he thought Eric had something to do with Biggie’s death.”

  “What do you suppose you gave him that idea?”

  “I asked him why he was following me once and he said he wanted to kill the person that murdered Biggie. I told him to forget about revenge and let me handle Biggie’s murder. I never said I thought Eric had anything to do with it.”

  Conroy had joined his agents at the scene of the shooting. He looked in our direction but Avery just shook of his head as if to say we had no idea what had happened. It was going to make for interesting television, and I knew that the Special Agent in Charge was as practical of a politician as well as he was a law man. He would spin this to clear up as much of the mess as he could. Not having Eric’s testimony would complicate prosecuting Jim Gabb for the heinous crimes he had just been accused of, but the flip side of that for the FBI was that now there would never be an embarrassing trial on those charges either.

  The death of my only cooperative witness meant that I would most likely have to recover my father’s body, and any evidence of the other killings, without the assistance of NOPD or the FBI. Neither organization had anything to gain by the publicity that would come with any investigation into what I had been told.

  I did not know if having a corpse and funeral would provide closure for my family as it was. I personally did not feel a weight had been lifted by knowing the truth. My mother finds comfort in being able to touch my face from time to time. Tulip likes having her big brother home from the wars. My own peace of mind was going to be in letting them know that both of the men in her life had been shot doing what they thought was best for other people.

  THIRTY SIX

  I went back inside and washed my face in the club's bathroom and tried to adjust my expression into something at least passably civil before I faced the day’s next challenge, which was finding a way out of the swamp the investigation had become. A lot of lives could be ruined for very little good reason. Amanda and Parker had the most to lose and had done the least wrong. Georgia was just as ruthless as Biggie and Bumper, but only when it came to protecting her cousin and nephew. Nobody who knew Biggie, or John for that matter, were mourning the death of the brutal and controlling brutes they had proven themselves to be. Bumper was also dead, along with his testimony against Gabb. Gabb was certainly on his way out the door at the FBI, but Conroy wasn’t going to let that bad apple spoil his own career.