An Evil Shadow - A Val Bosanquet Mystery

  Nolan had a parting shot to deliver

  “Bosanquet. Five thousand jobs to be precise, at eighteen cents an hour. But if you have a scrap of humanity, spare a thought for how it must have felt for the other hundred thousand rural Haitians who exchanged life on their farms for the shanty town hell of Cite Soleil and no job.”

  Marcel Gilett had to wait for the automatic spiked gates to roll back. The second he judged the opening wide enough, he pressed down on the car’s accelerator and squeezed through. Less than two inches clearance on either side. He drove quickly up the drive under the canopy of oaks, past the swimming pool and the tennis courts. In the three years that FRAPH had had him taking orders from Moncoeur, it was only the second time he had been summoned here. A sure sign that Moncoeur, normally the most composed of men, was rattled. Instructions were usually relayed in person by one of Moncoeur’s American bodyguards.

  Checking his watch, Gilett swore loudly. He was late after taking a wrong turn off for Lake Shore Drive. Moncoeur did not like being kept waiting, and Gilett had no wish to be the subject of the man’s ridicule.

  The mansion, built on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, reminded Gilett of an untidy stack of encyclopedias. Post-modernist, Moncoeur called it.

  Gigantic slabs of gray concrete facing in all directions, apparently at random. Frank Lloyd Wright on speed was how one of Moncoeur’s American bodyguards had summed up the building, not expecting Gilett to know whom he was talking about.

  There was a brand new Bentley out front in the shade of a cantilevered overhang, the showroom shine still fresh, the silver paintwork gleaming. Gilett parked his junker next to it and climbed out. He was met by a bodyguard and escorted to the mansion’s gymnasium. Despite himself, Gilett was impressed by the house's valuable, eclectic furnishings. The man sure knew how to spend money.

  Moncoeur was taking a sauna. The air outside the pine wood sauna smelt strongly of eucalyptus oil. He had heard the bodyguards saying how Moncoeur liked to sweat the alcohol out of his system after a night’s drinking.

  Gilett hesitated.

  “What are you waiting for?” the bodyguard asked.

  He couldn’t resist it. He stripped off his shirt and looked around for a towel or a robe.

  The bodyguard grinned. “I don’t think he was inviting you to take a sauna with him.”

  Gilett fixed the man with a mean stare as he put his shirt back on. The bodyguard held his gaze, something he wouldn’t have done three years ago. Playing the simple, uneducated islander sometimes had its drawbacks. Even some FRAPH people were ridiculing him behind his back. He wasn’t sure how much more of it he could take.

  He opened the door and stepped into the sauna. The heat washed over him and for an instant he could have been back in his hometown of Carrefour.

  Moncoeur was sitting on the top deck where the heat was most intense. Rivulets of perspiration ran down his face, gathered on the point of his chin and dripped onto the bottom edge of the newspaper he was reading.

  “Good press coverage of last night’s auction,” Moncoeur said. He held out the paper so Gilett could take a look at a picture of Lausaux handing the old man a set of car keys. Moncoeur folded the paper and set it down on the bench next to him.

  Moncoeur’s skin hung in loose folds over his stomach. His pubic hair was gray and his flaccid penis uncircumcised. Gilett wondered if Moncoeur was deliberately trying to degrade him. Bragging of the half million he had spent on a car, then more subtly with his nudity. Haiti may be the oldest black republic in the world, but even so, the color of a man’s skin still went a long way in determining social status on the island. The lighter the better, and there must have been more than a thousand shades separating the two of them.

  “No trouble last night?” Moncoeur asked.

  “None. I did exactly as you ordered.”

  “Excellent. Let’s hope it’s enough to dissuade Bosanquet from continuing with his snooping. Have you heard from the PI you hired?”

  “Yes. He faxed me his report this morning. Bosanquet is forty-three. Separated, but not divorced. No children. Both his parents are dead and he has one married brother. Resigned from the New Orleans Police Department voluntarily — nobody seems to know why. Financially he’s been walking a tightrope since then. Credit cards are maxed out, and he’s heavily overdrawn at the bank. Has been involved in the start-up of a number of small businesses; all of which flourished for a while, then faded whenever he lost interest.”

  “Where is his estranged wife?”

  Gilett knew exactly where she was, but he wasn’t about to tell Moncoeur. It always paid to have an ace in the hole. “The PI hasn’t been able to trace her. Do you want him to stick with it?”

  “No, leave it for now. They’ve split up, so she would be of limited use as leverage. I have another job for you. I want you to take a trip to St Francis parish and set up surveillance on Jackson’s parents’ house. Watch out for anything unusual, anything that might suggest they know into which hole their son has crawled.”

  The assignment rankled Gilett. In swamp country he would stand out like rat shit in a bowl of rice. “How long do you want me down there for?”

  Moncoeur filled a long-handled paddle with water from a wooden bucket. He splashed it over the hot coals. A cloud of super-heated steam climbed and spread along the roof of the sauna. Gilett could feel his nasal hairs burn.

  “Until you learn something,” Moncoeur said.

  Gilett had a craving to snap Moncoeur’s scrawny neck like a dry twig. Who the fuck did he think he was?

  “It they know nothing, I could watch them ‘til Christmas for all the good it would do. Isn’t time a factor here?”

  “Give it forty-eight hours, then do whatever it takes.”

  Moncoeur shut his eyes and lay back. The meeting was over.

  Gilett pushed open the door.

  “One more thing,” Moncoeur said, his eyes still shut. “No loose ends.”

  This time there was no waiting around in the foyer of Arena Victory’s headquarters. Val walked up to the security guard and told him that two youths were spray-painting graffiti on a section of the exterior marble cladding. The man thanked him and hurried off to investigate. Val gave the receptionist a quick flash of his shield and asked her which floor Jarvis Kraftson’s office was on. She hesitated for a second too long, so he swept his arm across the top of her desk, spilling to the floor papers, a silver-name plate, and a desk calendar.

  “The fifth,” the girl blurted out.

  He ripped the telephone’s lead out of its socket and warned her, “If you so much as touch a phone for the next fifteen minutes, you’ll be eating your Thanksgiving turkey in jail. Val rode the elevator alone. Those young Turks who had witnessed his performance in the lobby seemed happy to wait for the next one.

  Kraftson’s office was directly facing the doors of the escalator. Only he wasn’t VP of Human Resources as he had claimed. He was VP of Development. Val charged in and waved his shield at another startled young woman. He saw how the pout of her lips had been enhanced by collagen injections. For a fleeting instant he wondered what it would feel like to kiss her.

  “Is your boss in?” he barked. She nodded and plucked nervously at a silver locket at her throat.

  “If I were you, I’d take my lunch break now.”

  She reached out a thin hand to her telephone. Val caught her by the wrist, took the receiver from her and replaced it.

  “I said now.”

  She lifted up her purse from an open drawer, stood, and hesitantly backed towards the door.

  With luck he might have two or three minutes alone with Kraftson before security intervened. He waited until she had left before charging into the inner office.

  Kraftson was behind his desk, engrossed with his computer screen, clicking on a mouse under his right hand. He glanced across, and then jumped to his feet.

  “How dare you intrude!”

  “Sorry, I must have forgotten to make an appo
intment.” Val went around his desk and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. Kraftson projected an image of a man in control, but underneath he would be as soft as cotton. No match for the beast that lurked within Val. He lifted a cigarette lighter from the desk and rapped the heavy onyx base against the side Kraftson’s head. The man’s eyes widened in horror. Val could smell his fear.

  “You fucked with me, now I’m going to fuck with you.” He bounced the lighter off Kraftson’s skull for emphasis. “Big mistake telling me that Jackson had been fired. You cost a man his life.”

  Kraftson’s face blanched. Val gave his mouth an encouraging tap with the cold marble. Blood spurted out and his upper lip started to swell. He wouldn’t be ordering any gumbo for a week or two. Val withdrew the onyx a couple of inches.

  “I was given instructions,” he croaked.

  “By whom?”

  “I can’t tell you that.” A drop of blood dripped off his chin and stained the front of his shirt.

  “How about trying that one again?” He gave his mouth another tap with the lighter’s base. Stone cracked against enamel. “Or do you want to find out how good AV’s dental plan really is?”

  “Stuart MacLean, our CEO.”

  Val had heard and read a lot about MacLean over the past few years. Ambitious, a talented businessman, brash, an upstart. Verdicts differed. But one thing the journalists all agreed on: MacLean was the powerhouse behind AV.

  “That’s more like it. Where can I find Stuart? Is he in the building?”

  “No. He hasn’t been here for months. He’s been spending a lot of time in New York and Europe publicizing our flotation. I’ve only ever met him at half-yearly strategy meetings.”

  “What exactly is Jackson’s job?”

  “He’s paid to take care of difficulties. Anything dirty needs done, he’s the man. Leaning on labor organizers, bagman, payoffs, all kinds of things.”

  It didn’t come as any surprise to Val. “Where is he?”

  “We don’t know. He vanished into thin air about a week ago. Told nobody where he was going. We were instructed to drop everything and search for him.”

  “MacLean’s orders?”

  Kraftson nodded.

  “Why did Jackson kill Valerie Duval?”

  Kraftson’s eyes widened. “I’ve never heard of her.”

  “She was murdered ten years ago.”

  “For Chrissakes, I was still in college then.”

  Two security men crashed through the door. One of them was the man who had held a blood-filled syringe to Val’s throat.

  “Tell them to relax. We don’t want anyone hurt here,” he told Kraftson coldly.

  The frightened man twisted his head towards the security guards. “Do as he says. He means business.”

  The two guards swapped glances, then took a couple of steps forward.

  “Stay!” Kraftson shouted.

  They stopped in their tracks.

  “Do they do tricks as well?” Val asked, then turned to the security guards. “The VP and I have concluded our little tete-a-­tete and I’m going to leave now. If anyone tries to stop me or come after me, I’ll return and rip his fucking heart out.”

  Val let go of Kraftson’s shirtfront and he slumped back into his chair. His top lip was turning an angry shade of blue.

  Val waved the two guards away from the door and set the lighter back down. They glared at him belligerently but cooperated.

  Val slapped the flat of his palm hard against the ear of the one he had recognized. “You can keep the cash and the credit cards, but I want my driving permit returned.”

  He was back on the street in less than two minutes.

  Val bought a muffuletta sandwich and an espresso in a deli on Canal Street and took a seat at the window to watch a sudden thunderstorm bounce raindrops the size of pennies off the sidewalk. The smells inside the Italian restaurant were intoxicating. Rich spicy sausages were suspended from the ceiling, strings of dried garlic and peppers hung on the wall behind the counter, and three whole wheels of parmesan were stacked on top of each other next to jars of olives and pickled florets of cauliflower.

  If Trochan had been murdered by FRAPH, as seemed likely, then it was probably because he had inadvertently stumbled across them in his quest for his former partner. It appeared that something had spooked Jackson, Val brooded, and he wasn’t the sort of man to frighten easily. What exactly had he done to bring FRAPH’s ire down on his head? His particular talents had been long employed by Arena Victory, whose operation in Port-au-Prince would have required some degree of alliance with FRAPH. Jackson and FRAPH; FRAPH and Jackson. They could have been made for each other. Natural allies, not enemies.

  Val started to work backwards. Maybe some of the Tonton Macoute held a grudge against Jackson. After all, he had taken an axe to the wife of one of their number. They say revenge is a dish best enjoyed cold — but ten years?

  It was time to talk to Marie Duval again.

  She was sitting at a desk in Marcus’s living room, checking off a pile of second-hand books she had bought against a reading list for her first semester. Angie had answered the door.

  “Take a walk,” Val told her. “I want to speak to Duval.”

  He was wound up and knew he’d blown it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. It was the wrong approach to take with Angie. Now nothing short of a hurricane would shift her. Fair enough. Maybe it was time she found out the sort of person she had admitted into her home.

  He spun Duval’s chair around and glowered down at her, stabbing a finger in her direction.

  “You set me up.”

  Duval glared up at him, her eyes full of defiance. “What do you mean?”

  “Val, how dare you come here and start bullying my friends,” Angie protested, inserting herself between them. Two days back in the job and already you’re reverting to type.”

  “Butt out, Angie,” he said, taking hold of her wrists and moving her to one side. “This is between me and her.”

  He spoke to Duval again. “I’m not the only person you’ve told about Jackson. You talked to your friends in FRAPH first. Somebody must have got a warning to him and he went into hiding before they had a chance to kill him.”

  Angie’s face lost its color and her mouth dropped open. Val ignored her and concentrated on Duval.

  “They couldn’t find him, so you recruited me. With my detective training and police department connections, you knew there was a good chance I would come through. But you hadn’t planned to let FRAPH know about me, at least not until I had found Jackson for you.”

  “You’re a crazy man!” Duval screamed. “No one but you and I know about Jackson.”

  “That’s crap. Because of you and your story, I offered a man two hundred dollars to trace Jackson. It cost him his life.”

  Duval got to her feet, shaking with anger, her eyes full of hatred. Exactly the way they had been that night ten years before.

  “I told you about Jackson and you didn’t believe a word of it. You physically threw me out of your house. Now you burst in here claiming that you had somebody searching for him. That’s one hell of a U-turn. I’m sorry for the man that has been killed, but it has nothing to do with me.”

  Val grunted. She had a point.

  “Okay,” he said. “So what if you initially thought that your ruse had failed? It doesn’t alter the fact that a man died because you crave vengeance.”

  “You’re so wrong. I don’t want anything other than to be left alone to study and get on with my life. Can’t you understand that?”

  “Only too well. How hard did your friends at FRAPH have to lean on Assist Haiti before it agreed to sponsor you?”

  All the fight suddenly left Duval’s face. It took her a few moments to respond. “Is this another leap in the dark, or do you have some reason for saying it?”

  “Work it out for yourself. You’re far from the only bright Haitian kid in Louisiana. What would some of them give for the chance of a college edu
cation? Haiti needs teachers, scientists and doctors, a damned sight more than they need Caribbean Art graduates.”

  Duval broke down. She covered her face with her hands and started to sob, her whole body shuddering. Angie put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her tight to her chest.

  She looked up at Val. “Proud of yourself? What sort of brute could do this to a young woman? Leave this house now,” she hissed.

  There was no point trying to explain that as a detective he had been expected to function in exactly this manner on a daily basis. Something he had become all too good at. He wheeled around and left.

  Val strode across the street to the plainclothes officer taking his turn at watching Duval. The officer wound down the car window.

  “Everything okay, Chief?”

  “Yeah, everything’s fine. You can report back to the station house. Tell Captain Clements that I’m pulling the surveillance on Duval.”

  The officer appeared surprised, but nodded and drove off.

  Val climbed into his car and headed south across town to the Irish Channel. First stop was the building where Duval had lived with her mother. The exterior had grown considerably more decrepit in the intervening years: a section of roof tiles had gone and two of the top floor windows were blackened with soot. Nobody challenged him as he walked through the hall to the rear. The makeshift lean-to had been torn down; there was nothing left now to show that it had ever existed. The yard was a mass of weeds. He knocked on a few doors, but had no luck finding a resident who had been living there ten years before, though he talked to one woman who said the building was owned by a company called Crescent City Holdings. She wasn’t able to tell him how long they had owned it.

  Val spent the next couple of hours pounding the sidewalks, touring the district’s thronged Haitian bars. The fronts were painted in bright vivid colors and a cacophony flooded out from their shutterless doors and windows. A combination of loud meringue music pulsing with African Caribbean rhythms, video games being played, and rapid, teeth-clicking Creole. Each time he brought up FRAPH, all he got was a lot of blank faces and a nervous shaking of heads. Moncoeur’s name produced a similar response. Eventually he couldn’t take the stink of cheap rum, reefer smoke and fried okra any longer and headed home.