“I know one parish sheriff who won’t be thrilled at that.”
Larson drank from his beaker. “Maybe when they’re through with him, I’ll be given a crack. God only knows how many investigations I could close the book on.”
“I’m pretty sure it was Gilett who killed Trochan. He was carrying a stiletto blade and seemed to know how to use it.”
Larson rolled his eyes. “Did you have to go and shoot him twice? What if he doesn’t make it?”
Val smiled apologetically. “He had a fifty-six inch chest and had a Remington pump in his hand. Discussion would have been wasted on him.”
“Let’s hope for your sake the FBI will see it the same way. If he dies, the agents will nail your ass to the sidewalk just to give themselves something to do. You could save yourself a lot of grief if you were to return to the department. I know the Commissioner has no objections.”
Light broke inside Val’s head. “So that’s what was bringing you to the campus?”
Larson held up his hands. “Guilty as charged. Keep playing the maverick investigator the way you have been and you’re going to wind up dead. We know how to lay on a pretty classy funeral.”
“It’s tough saying no to such an attractive offer, but I’m going have to pass.”
Larson shrugged. “I don’t give up easy, and I still haven’t forgiven you for that bullshit story about Jackson and his poker school.”
Val smiled. “I need a favor.”
“If it was anybody else but you saying that, I’d take it as a bad joke. What is it you want?”
It took a while for Val to explain the direction his findings was guiding him. Larson listened carefully. Val covered Jackson’s dubious assignments with Arena Victory and that firm’s probable involvement in the relocation of the Artibonite Valley farmers; how Moncoeur had bought up their land for a song; Duval’s accusation of Jackson, and the possibility that they shared the same father.
“Have you told Duval whose genes she could be carrying in her blood?” Larson broke in.
“No, and I don’t intend to. She’s been through a lot and I can’t see what good it would serve.”
“Maybe more than you think. Most of what you’ve told me is either circumstantial or supposition. Duval could be holding something back that would clinch it. The disclosure of her kinship might persuade her to talk.”
“I can’t see it helping.”
“Whatever the motive for her mother being killed, it has to be the key to the whole damned thing.”
“I agree, but I’m positive she’s not aware of it.”
“Then your only option is to find Jackson before FRAPH stroke Moncoeur does. They must want him bad. Any idea why?”
Val swept a shock of hair back from his forehead. “How does one-point-five billion dollars sound?”
Larson whistled and raised his eyebrows. “Like an awful lot of money.”
“That’s what Arena Victory’s stockholders stand to make when the company is floated next Friday. I think Donny Jackson might be threatening to expose some of the company’s less savory corporate practices to the financial press if they don't cut him in for a share. Any hint of a scandal or a skeleton in the cupboard at this stage would have a disastrous effect on the take-up of the stock. The flotation would flop. It could finish the company.”
“Don’t be so sure. Wall Street doesn’t let a little thing like murder or exploitation get in the way of making money. Who is behind AV?”
Six years previously Larson had investigated the apparent suicide of a junk bond dealer who had flown in to New Orleans from New York for New Year celebrations. He had been able to establish that the man’s death was murder and, with the help of a friend, had untangled the financial complexities to show motive. The killer had been the dealer’s lawyer, who was now spending his days lodging appeals from a cell on Angola’s death row.
“That’s the favor I need from you. I could get sidetracked trying to unearth the current investors, with no guarantee of success. The flotation underwriters will provide me with a list of the registered stockholders if I ask for it, but it’s my guess that they would be nothing more than holding companies with addresses in the Caymans and the Antilles. You still have that contact in the Securities and Exchange Commission? I could use some specialist know-how.”
“Yeah, sounds right up his street. There’s nothing he likes better than a legitimate excuse to stick his nose into offshore companies. I’ll give him a call. Who do you have your money on?”
Val thought about it for a few moments. “Moncoeur for one, and a few of his Haitian buddies. MacLean, Arena Victory’s CEO. Lausaux could be in on it too. Those three were the unholy trinity involved in the hog debacle. They may have pulled similar stunts in India and Vietnam. It worked once, why not a second and a third time? They could have taken on new partners as they needed to. While he’s at it, ask your friend to check out a company called Crescent City Holdings. It’s the company that owns the building where Valerie Duval was killed.”
Larson stood up and went behind his desk. He scribbled a few notes on a pad. “Jackson might know the principals behind AV. That’s one more good reason for getting to him first.”
Val weighed up the pros and cons of telling Larson about Malcolm Kellerman. So far, Larson had expressed no interest in officially reopening the Duval investigation, mainly, Val believed, because there was only Marie Duval’s word for what really happened. Producing correlative testimony, albeit hearsay, could change that. Val decided to hold back, at least until he could determine the priest’s agenda in trying to mislead him. “That’s about the height of it. I owe you one.”
“I know.” Larson grinned. “May the Prophet continue to smile on you.”
John Clements was in his kitchen, helping his wife fill the dishwasher, when the phone went. They had just cleared the kitchen table after breakfasting with their son and his fiancée. His wife was closest, so she picked up the phone.
The call was for her husband. She handed him the receiver and went back to stacking the dishwasher.
“Clements here.”
“Good morning, John. I’m phoning to say how shocked I was when I heard that the university had appointed Val Bosanquet, Chief of Campus Police. That job should have been yours.”
“Who’s speaking?” Clements instinctively realized the call meant trouble.
“Just a concerned citizen who has left a parcel for you in your yard. It’s in your barbecue. A little something to compensate for the reprehensible manner in which the university has treated you.”
Clements turned his back to his wife. “What do you want?”
“The same as you. We both want to see Bosanquet taken down a peg or two. I can be of some assistance.”
“I don’t want any part of this.”
“Before you hang up, think of your wife. And what about your son and his beautiful fiancée? I hear he’s getting married next month. It would be a pity if something were to happen to spoil their big day.”
Clements’s wife closed the door of the dishwasher and switched it on. She walked past him, displaying no inquisitiveness about the call. We could hear her walk upstairs. “What do you want from me?”
“I’ll be telephoning you twice a day. Seven-thirty in the morning and seven-thirty in the evening. Don’t bother trying to trace the calls; it would be time wasted. I’ll use the name Troy Pollack. All you have to do is tell me what Bosanquet is up to. Where’s he been, whom he has been talking to. I’ll take care of the rest. In no time at all you’ll be Chief and there be another package left some place for you to find. You can’t lose.”
“I won’t be bought.”
“John, you already have been. The parcel in your barbecue doesn’t have a sender’s address on it. It’s yours now and I don’t much care what you do with it. Hold on to it and throw your son and his bride one hell of a wedding celebration, or turn it in. Either way, you remain in my debt.”
“Go to hell.”
“Don’t be so h
asty. Think about it, John. Will your son’s fiancée still want to marry a man after I have him gelded? Will your wife still consider your loyalty to Bosanquet honorable on the morning she opens a parcel containing her son’s balls? I could have them mounted as earrings for her. Do we understand each other? Let me know your answer at seven-thirty.”
Clements set the receiver down as though it was made of crystal. He rested his head against the cold tiles of the wall and struggled to keep his knees from buckling.
He had no idea how long he remained like that.
Later, he opened the back door of the house and crossed the yard to the gas barbecue. The parcel had been wrapped in plain brown paper and Scotch-taped to the underside of the metal lid. Sitting in his car, in the privacy of his garage, he opened it. He found a photograph of his son and five thick bundles of hundred dollar bills. He recognized the picture; it was the one that his wife kept on top of the piano in a mother-of-pearl frame.
He counted one of the bundles. Ten thousand dollars. Times five. Fifty-thousand dollars in used, non-consecutive notes.
Lee Stone was not at home when Val called at his house. His wife told him he could find her husband at a golf driving-range out near the airport. They had bought it when he had retired from the police department, she explained. Turned out to be a great investment, though she saw less of him now than when he was in uniform.
Val had considered asking Larson to provide him with a list of arrests that Jackson had made during his time as a cop, in particular those who had walked. Even better, he then realized, would be the names of those who Jackson had never given a ride in the back seat of his patrol car. The one man who could give him that information was NOPD Sergeant Lee Stone, Retired.
His quarry was encased in a wire cage on top of the lawn tractor he was driving across the flat, grass-covered range, towing a contraption to collect golf balls. One of his assistants went to wave him in and told Val to wait next to a practice sand trap.
Stone had been Jackson’s sergeant for most of his time at the Garden District Station. He pulled up beside Val and gave him a friendly smile of recognition. He was black and had a scar that ran the length of his jaw. Stone told rookies that it was a knife wound, but in reality he had crashed through a plate-glass window one night when he was bombed.
“Good to see you again,” Stone shouted above the throb of the diesel motor. He was dressed in sky-blue shorts and a navy-blue polo shirt. He didn’t appear to have aged a single day since Val had last seen him.
Val asked him if they could have a word.
“Sure. If you don’t mind riding with me. Stand on the footplate and grip the cage. The ball dispensers are almost out; Sunday’s our busiest day.”
Val suspiciously eyed the bays where upwards of two dozen golfers were single-mindedly driving balls skyward. He heard a tinny crash as a ball whacked into the two-hundred-yard marker.
“Don’t worry, the odds are against being hit,” Stone said.
“That’s easy to say from where you’re sitting.”
Val climbed on board and Stone steered the lawn tractor back towards the center of the range, around the two-hundred-and-twenty-five yard mark.
“What can I do for you? I take it you’re not here to groove your swing,” Stone said.
“I’m not,” Val replied, ducking instinctively as a ball clanged against the mesh cage, grateful that he was on the leeward side. “I need some information.”
“I heard you took a job at the university. My niece is about to start her sophomore year.”
“Remember an officer called Donny Jackson?”
“Sure do. What’s he been up to now?”
“He’s missing. I think you might be able to help me find him.”
Stone turned the tractor in a wide arc and started another traverse across the range. The plastic discs on the ball-retriever were set a fraction narrower than the width of a golf ball. The balls lodged between the discs as Stone drove over them, then metal fingers scooped them into wire baskets. Val watched as a kid blasted a golf ball right at him. The prick seemed to be using him as a target.
“He must have loused up pretty bad for you to be interested.”
Val closed his eyes and flinched as a ball whistled over his head, missing him by inches. “I think he may have heisted some university property.”
“Seems to me you’ve got yourself a trifle out of kilter,” Stone said, twisting around in his seat. “You’re been backing that child axe-killer. Now you’re trying to hang something petty on an ex-cop with a bad rep. I don’t know that I want any part of it.”
Val relaxed slightly as Stone started his turn for another traverse. Each crossing was taking the tractor further from the driving bays. They’d soon be at John Daly distance. He scanned the bays. Damn, the kid was reaching into his golf bag and taking out a longer club. He probably had a swing like Tiger Woods.
Now wasn’t the time for discretion.
“The girl didn’t kill her mother,” Val shouted above the din. “It was Jackson.”
Stone reached out and turned off the engine. “Why didn’t you say so? I always had him read as a stone-killer. How can I help you?”
Val stepped onto firm ground again. “I’m not the only one after Donny.”
“So?”
“He needs to keep some distance between him and them and can’t rely on any of his recent associates to shield him. I’d figure he’d take up with somebody he knew a long time ago. Maybe another coonass who has moved up to the bright lights.”
“Sounds like he’s bitten into some real trouble this time.”
“I thought you might have a name. Someone who might owe Jackson a favor.”
Stone’s face turned serious. “There were plenty of street hookers who owed Jackson, but he wasn’t slow in collecting — usually in kind. Most of the girls he put the bite on would be long gone by now. If you were to wade into the right sewer, you could probably find Roland Galen. He could be worth talking to.”
“I don’t recognize the name.”
“Galen comes from outside Morgan City. An army doctor, he returned from Desert Storm straight into a drug rehab program. He cleaned up his act, but it lasted only for a year or two. Eventually the army dumped him, and the AMA pulled his license to practice. His family had money, so they opened a weight-loss clinic in New Orleans and hired a legit doctor to front it. They thought they would be killing two birds with the one stone; Galen wouldn’t need to risk being busted buying his drugs, and he would stay close to New Orleans and not come bothering them.
“The family got it wrong big time. Half the buzz for Galen was the danger involved in sourcing his drugs on the street, and the doctor they installed to run the clinic had expensive vices of his own. He was a gay stud with a libido that required the services of two or three juveniles a day. Galen kept him supplied with druggies who didn’t mind who they had to blow for the price of their next fix. As trade-off, the doctor let Galen’s activities slide. Pretty soon he and the Doc had diversified the clinic operation by adding an illegal but lucrative service. Abortions ‘R’ Us. They were also heavy into the treatment of STDs.”
“Were they selling scripts?’
“No. Galen was too smart for that. He knew the wise-guys wouldn’t have tolerated the competition.”
“The clinic was never busted?”
Stone shook his head. “It was raided on three separate occasions, but no conclusive evidence was ever obtained.”
“Somebody was tipping them off?”
“Sure seemed that way. Jackson was thought to have been responsible.”
“Why was that?”
“Three months after he and Trochan are canned, the clinic is targeted again. This time the police department gets all the evidence it needs. The doctor loses his license and gains three years in Angola prison farm. He was killed his second week, for making a move on another con’s bitch. Galen is handed down a heavy fine, which his family stumps up for.”
??
?You think Galen could still be in New Orleans?”
“Sure to be — that’s if he’s alive. A druggie never strays far from his source.”
“Who is?”
“An ass-wipe calling himself Logjam. His pappy named him Howard Woods. He’s been up to the farm a couple of times.”
“Where’s his pitch?”
“He sells mainly around Tulane and Loyola. Sometimes he could be found on St Charles and Lee Circle. Had a partner, Bobby Deal.”
Val tipped an imaginary cap to Stone and thanked him. He waited until the long-hitting kid had taken his swing before making a beeline for the side of the range. Stone restarted the tractor and went back to trawling golf balls.
Val had the name of the restaurant where Duval worked from the photograph he had taken off Roy Jackson’s body. It was a trendy place on Tchoupitoulas Street’s gallery row in the warehouse district, catering for expense-account executives, especially those with a taste for seafood. They served brunch on Sundays, which normally required a reservation.
The maitre d’ took a haughty glance at Val’s shield, then showed him to a table near the kitchen door. Val cast an eye over the menu as he waited for Duval to appear. He could have bought a three-course lunch at Daft Eadie’s for the price they were charging for a bowl of chowder.
Duval was togged out smartly in a black skirt, white blouse, and burgundy mess jacket. She didn’t notice him and continued to bus tables. The restaurant was crowded, and the headwaiter was keeping his staff on its toes.
Eventually she spotted him. He noticed how her lips tightened as she pretended she hadn’t. Val stood up and walked over to her.
“What are you doing here?” she hissed, not wanting to be overheard.
“I want to talk with you.”
“Haven’t you said enough?”
“To apologize.”
He saw how his admission had taken her by surprise. Her eyes darted from side to side, unsure of what to do next.
“The restaurant is full. It’s not a good time,” she said finally, throwing a glance in the headwaiter’s direction.
“I’m here now. Is there somewhere private? It won’t take long.”
Duval took another glance around. “You’d best come through.”
She led him into the kitchen, stopping briefly to ask another member of staff to handle her tables while she took a quick break, into a room at the back. There was a row of metal lockers along one wall and a wooden-slatted bench in the center. Some Baywatch fan had taped a poster of a swim-suited Pamela Anderson to the outer wall. One of her front teeth had been blacked out.