War Debt by Richard Helms Scat Boudreaux was born in a house on stilts, so far back in the bayou that spring didn't get there until Memorial Day. His father, Gaston Boudreaux, had built the house out of swamp cypress and live oak with his father, Louis Boudreaux, and Scat's great-grandfather, Alphonse Boudreaux, when he was not much more than seven. The family had lived there for almost forty years when Scat was born to Gaston's second wife. Gaston Boudreaux was illiterate, as had been almost all the Boudreaux men as far back as anyone could recall. Scat's mother, though, had received the benefit of a sixth grade education before his father spirited her back into the bayou, where she would spend the rest of her life. She was determined that Scat would learn to read, and she bought books when she and Gaston visited the area towns to trade in skins and reptiles that Gaston trapped in the swamps. Gaston thought the books were a waste of time, since Scat was destined to follow the life of all Boudreaux men, and make his life from the rich bayou itself. Toward that end, Gaston saw to it that Scat had a gun in his hand almost before he was large enough to lift it, and showed him how to shoot as soon as he could sight down the barrel. He'd sit with Scat on the front porch of their bayou stilt-house and shoot at random animals that crossed their paths - raccoons, nutria rats, water moccasins - and from the age of three Scat was cautioned that ammunition was expensive, not to be wasted. He learned to kill with a single shot, and when it came his time to provide for the Boudreaux table the family ate very well. Still, his mother believed that Scat needed more than fieldcraft and marksmanship, and she persuaded Gaston to allow her to take him to tent meetings in the nearby towns. It took a while, but Gaston finally relented, and Mercy Boudreaux started taking Scat to revivals and circuit preachings. Scat would sit next to his mother on hard wooden-slat folding chairs, among more people than he had ever seen in his entire life. They'd cool themselves with funeral home oiled-paper fans, and he would listen to the circuit preacher rail against sin and sinners, and sing "Rock My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham", and Mercy would bring along some food for the community gathering that followed the services. Around the time Scat was nineteen, several well-dressed men from the local Democratic Party office showed up at one of the tent meetings, to sign up people to vote. Scat had no knowledge of politics, but he liked to show off the writing skills Mercy Boudreaux had taught him. He filled out a registration form. It was 1970, and the folks at the local Selective Service office had never heard of Scat Boudreaux, since he had been birthed at home by a midwife, and his family had never paid any taxes or voted. When they discovered this nineteen-year-old living out in the bayou, though, they carried out their legal duty and hired an airboat driver to take them out to register him for the draft. Three months later, Scat was at Camp Lejeune. He didn't understand much of what was happening to him, except that he had the opportunity to fire weapons much more powerful than the long guns his father had inherited, and the schedule suited him, and of course he had never been afraid of hard work. His DI recognized genius, though, and it wasn't long before Scat was shipped south to Parris Island, where he flourished in the swampy environment, and impressed his officers with his ability to score one-shot kills. So, seven months after signing up to join the Democratic Party, Scat found himself in another swamp in Southeast Asia, fighting a war waged by a Republican president who was trying to achieve peace with honor, and who wanted Scat to do his part by killing specially selected military officers, at significant distances, using high-powered rifles, and try not to get killed himself in the process. Over the next eighteen months, capitalizing on the hunting skills instilled in him by Gaston Boudreaux, Scat scored thirty hits, all one-shot wonders, and would have set the all-Marine record if a Logistics Officer hadn't been shacked up in the head with Miss February instead of ordering the Evac chopper to the LZ to pick him up after a kill. Scat waited until nightfall, and then decided that if he were going to return to friendly lines, he would have to do it himself. He hadn't gone a mile before he was captured by the VC. He had the presence of mind to ditch the sniper rifle before being caught, and it was a sure thing that if the Cong had known who they had, they'd have killed him outright. As it was, he became just another PW. Scat spent almost a year in a tiger cage before he escaped. He fashioned bamboo finger knives, which he lashed to his hands with strings raveled from his own fatigues. With them, he eviscerated the entire VC camp one night, starting with the guy who brought him his daily ration of rice. No fool, Scat knew he was far behind the lines, and that it would be days before he could reach friendly territory. This constituted roughly the extent of his reason, as what was left of his sanity had been totally wiped clean by his captors' treatment. So, to assure he had enough protein for the trek, he cannibalized large portions of the VC and then began an epic journey through the jungle, one which never made the papers. Scat later rationalized it as something he just had to do to survive, but whenever he couldn't find enough food from the lower genera, he would resort to killing random VC soldiers he ran across, and gorging on them. When he walked out of the jungle on a bright Sunday morning, he went straight to his CO's office and presented himself for duty. Stars And Stripes ran a three-part feature on this unlikely hero, and he even made two pages in People Magazine. ABC did a forgettable Movie Of The Week about his escape, and his CO pinned a bunch of medals on his chest. All of this, of course, took place after he was discharged. When the Marines discovered how he had actually survived his journey, they classified the report and issued the fastest Hardship Discharge in the history of the United States Defense Department. * * * * * The next time you're in New Orleans, take a stroll down Bourbon Street, past the pussy bars, the Hurricane stands, the tee shirt tourist traps and tattoo parlors, past the grand old antebellum homes, and keep walking toward Esplanade. After a dozen blocks or so, especially after dark, you begin to feel crawly things on the back of your neck, and you become aware of a quickening in your pulse, a shortness of breath. The lights and clamor of the French Quarter of the Travel Channel are left far behind. The buildings become seedy, dark, and progressively smaller. Storefronts are blacked in, or boarded over. Desperate eyes follow your steps from inky doorways and furtive alleys. At this end of Bourbon Street, a voodoo shop is serious business, a place where you can arrange for some serious mojo that will, really and truly, stop the beating heart of a Santeria follower. About three blocks from Esplanade is a squat brick building painted olive drab. There are no windows in front, and no signs, save for a single painted shingle over the front door, reading Semper Fi. I opened the door, and stood in the entrance way for a moment while my eyes adjusted to the gloom. The military surplus smell of old wool and machine oil washed over me. Across the room, I heard a growl, and then a sharp command in a language I didn't understand. The growling stopped short, and was followed by amiable panting. "Whatcha want, Gallegher?" Sonny asked. Sonny is a sawed-off, one-armed, one-eyed vet who runs the legitimate front business at Semper Fi. He wears an eyepatch with a Jolly Roger on it, and I have never seen him in anything other than Viet Nam era combat greens. The growl came from Howitzer, his German shepherd/gray wolf mix guard dog. I jerked a thumb in the direction of the back storage room. "He in?" "Always, Doc. Go on back." Sonny knew I didn't want to buy anything in the front of the store. I had been there enough times over the last several years that he knew what I was after. I parted the curtain behind the counter and walked into Scat Boudreaux's real business. In the back of Semper Fi was an arsenal that would make any National Guard Armory proud. Shelves stretching from floor to ceiling were stocked with pistols, rifles, grenades, flak vests, and a number of unmarked boxes the contents of which I felt more comfortable not knowing. The cops know about Scat's business, but they leave him alone, largely because weapons violations are a Federal matter. The Feds leave him alone because he is the most dangerous man in Louisiana, and they still have occasional use for his services. Besides, they have already been informed that Semper Fi is booby-trapped, and if Scat decides to light the fuse, the resulting explosions would probably take out half a city block. Scat was sitting on a couch, beside a stack of tabloid newpapers, with banners like Endgame Times, and Apocalypse News. He had a can of PBR in one hand, and a paper in the other. "Have a seat, Slick," he said, never taking his eyes off the paper. "Lemme finish this article." He read on, using the skills his mother had taught him, his mouth dancing in tandem with his eyes, until he finished the piece. He tossed the paper on the table next to the couch. The last time I had seen Scat Boudreaux, he was collecting on a bet. Sonny had bragged to the rest of the bar where we were bending a few elbows that Scat could put the eye out of a squirrel at a hundred yards and drop two more before the first one stumbled. We were three squirrels shy, but one guy did have a boat and volunteered to cruise out to the middle of the Mississippi where it bends near the French Quarter, and put three empty beer bottles on the bow. After the wagering was done, he motored out in the river about three hundred feet. We gathered on a small hillock near the World Trade Center, and Scat prepared his rifle while the rest of us watched for cops. Scat checked the wind, adjusted the bead on the telescopic sight on an M-16 his partner had taken from his trunk, and in the space of a second shattered all three bottles, scattering shards of glass across the prow of the boat. Unlike Sonny, Scat tended to dress down a little at work. He still wore the fatigue camo pants he favored, but he also seemed to have an endless supply of tee shirts, all with different logos and legends. Today's sample was a promo from a basketball shoe company, which read Don't Diss Me, or I'll Dance On Your Face. Tattoos peeked out from his shirt sleeve, vivid depictions of snakes and lethal stilettos. He had shaved his head completely, save for a narrow inch-high mohawk running from his crown to the base of his neck in back. "I don't know why I bother, Slick," he said, shaking his head. "Guy tries to make a decent living, and the gummint just takes it away from him. Excise tax, value added tax, self-employment tax, it's just one thing after another. And you know why, right?" He didn't wait for me to answer. I had learned not interrupt him when he got rolling. "Well, hell, it's all part of the conspiracy. Your Trilateralists and Illuminati, and your Masons and your Papists, well they done pulled together and forced a treaty with the Jewish Bund, and you already know that they control half the wealth in the free world. Lookie here, Slick..." He pulled a dollar bill from his pocket. "Now, there is Masonic symbols all over this here dollar bill. That ain't no accident, pal. It's part of the plan. It's part of the indoctrination. I was watchin' television last night, just tryin' to relax a little after a hard day's work, and this Jeopardy show was on, and do you know they allowed the wrong answers to almost half the questions. Why'd they do that, d'ya think? It's part of the conspiracy. Propagate the big lie, just like Goebbels did over in Hitler Germany, tell the people stuff over and over again, and sooner or later they're gonna start to believe it. Like this tax thing, now nowhere in the entire United States of America tax code does it say you have to pay a penny to the gummint. It just says you have to file a return every April the fifteenth. But, if you don't pony up, just watch and see what they do to you. They'll take everything you own, right down to the fillings in your teeth, and they'll take your dreams too, and I'll just be damned if that's right..." Perhaps I should intervene here, and not transcribe the rest of his tirade. Let's just leave it as a given that you can take the boy out of the tiger cage, but you can't take the tiger cage out of the boy. His year as a VC captive had left scary, barbed, tightly coiled things embedded between Scat's ears, little timebombs that were just waiting for a chance to go off. Besides being the most dangerous man in Louisiana, Scat was certifiably nuts. Maybe that was part of what made him so dangerous in the first place. He didn't finish his tantrum so much as just run out of steam, and afterward he sat on the couch, shaking his head. He reached into the back pocket of his camo fatigue pants, pulled out a packet of Red Man, and chewed off a corner of it before stuffing the packet back in his pants. "Anyway, what'cha got, Slick? You still playing horn over in that bar off Toulouse Street?" I nodded. "Every night, ten to close." "Keepin' out of trouble? You ain't gone and got yourself involved in any of them favors you like to do, have you?" "That's why I'm here," I told him. "I need some assistance." "For what?" "It seems I've run into some trouble with the Anolli family." "Gone afoul of the guineas, huh?" He waited for me to get the joke. "You know, foul, like in f-o-w-l? Guinea fowls? Jesus, Slick, aint'cha got no sense of humor anymore?" "I'm kind of preoccupied, Scat." "Okay, so you're in dutch with the Anollis. Tell me about it." I took a moment to arrange my thoughts. It was sort of complicated. "This guy came to me about a week ago. I knew him from a few years back, when I was gambling." "You're still in a program, right?" I had been in Gamblers' Anonymous for five years, and I told him so. "Anyway, this guy was in trouble. He had gotten into a high stakes game with some guys who run the pussy clubs down on Bourbon Street. He was feeling cocky, he'd been on a streak, and he figured he could make the big score and slide for awhile." "And lemme guess. They stripped him clean." "Worse. He won big. He had a really amazing night." "Who was the other guys?" "Well, there was Huey Fontine." "I know him. Huey's no problem. He owes me a favor." "Then there's Sly Reynard." "Oh, Jesus, Gallegher. Reynard?" "Yeah." "Man, it's one thing if your guy's playin' humans, but Reynard..." "My guy doesn't care where his money comes from." "Who is your guy, anyway?" "Monty Sandeck." "Never heard of him." "He took Fontine, Reynard, and Lucien Fleck for almost twenty large." "It was a fair game?" I shrugged. "Monty doesn't have a rep for playing dirty." "So, what's the problem?" "After the game, Reynard asked Monty to hang around for awhile. Said he had a business proposition. Monty's no idiot. He knows Sly doesn't like to get lightened, so he figured Sly was working a shuck to get some of his stake back. Now, you know Reynard. He's into a lot more than his bar. He's got pieces of all kinds of action in the Quarter. So he sat down with Monty and said something like, 'Hey, you want to make some real money?'Like that. Monty wasn't interested very much at first, but then Reynard started dangling zeros in front of him. After a few minutes, they get to be hypnotic." "What did he want Monty to do?" "Reynard is muling dirty money for some of Lucho Braga's franchise players, guys who run gambling houses, hot pillow joints, that sort of thing. It's a cash-only business, and the money has to go somewhere. Lucho isn't interested in how the money gets laundered, since he just skims off the cream, and he's got his own network. So, Reynard set up a deal with several of the little guys to handle the transactions. He's in the shorts of some guy in a Mexican bank, who has agreed to deposit the money off the record, and then this Mexican makes a series of wire transfers to Bahamian and Cayman banks, never more than five large at a time. The franchise guys run auctions on the Internet, selling all kinds of shit - six-gallon toilets, jewelry, whatever they can get off of fences cheap. They basically buy their own shit, using fake internet names, and pay themselves out of the Caribbean accounts using online pay programs - you know, the kind that take money securely from one account and place it into another, for a fee." "Man, this money is getting stepped on - what - five or six times?" "Yeah. Lucho skims off the top, then Reynard takes a hit, and pays Monty out of his end, then the Mexican gets a bite, and then the franchise players have to spend a little to get the shit they sell online. I figure they net, maybe, fifty percent of their gross, but it's clean money." "What about the auction items? What happens to them?" "Damned if I know. Maybe it's dumped, or re-fenced. Maybe the franchise guys ship it to a warehouse in Biloxi. Who cares?" "Just wondering. Where does Monty work into the scam?" "You know Reynard. Guy must weight eight hundred pounds. No way is he going to get on an airplane, unless he goes as baggage. He needs someone who can hand-carry the cash down to Oaxaca and turn it over to the bank connection." "No electronic records that way." "Right. It's the missing link in the scam. If the Feds can't figure out where the money goes after the franchise players move it, they can't demonstrate that it's illegal when it comes back home." "It's a cool game." "It was, up until a couple of weeks ago." "What happened?" "Monty got tagged. He got lazy, used his own name one too many times when he was buying air tickets. It must have raised a black flag in some computer in Washington. He was at the airport, getting ready to board the plane, when he spotted a couple of guys he made as cops talking with the ticket clerk. Monty, he can read lips a little, and he was sure he saw her say his name. The federal cops got on the plane with him, and sat about five rows back. He said he could feel their eyes on the back of his neck the whole trip down. They followed him off the plane, but he managed to ditch them in the airport in Oaxaca. Rather than go to the bank, he just turned around and grabbed the next plane to New Orleans. "He went to Reynard that night, and explained that he almost got nabbed. Reynard talked sweetly to him, telling him it was all right, that it was time to find another mule, that they'd siphoned off a lot of money together." "Doesn't sound like Sly," Scat said. "Not much. Monty went home that night, checked his bank account, and decided he could do with a nice long vacation. While he was packing, a couple of button men crept his house, and almost took him out." "Just like that?" "Cover quick, and no excuses. Sly didn't waste any time. Best I can figure it, he decided that Monty had become a liability. Sooner or later, the feds were going to rein Monty in and sweat him, and then they'd be coming after Sly. It was time to break the connection." "Cold." "Frigid. But that's Reynard, Scat. Like you said, he's not human." "How'd your guy get away?" "He had a silent alarm. There was one system he kept that was apparent, and a secondary that wasn't. Once the shooters thought they had neutralized the apparent alarm, they came on in and set off the silent monitor. Monty went out a window, but not before he saw the killers. They were carrying standard issue - double deuce automatics with silencers." "Pros," Scat said, stroking his chin. "Or close enough. Now, who do you know in the French Quarter that can bring in that kind of talent in three hours or less?" Scat waved his hand in the air. "Lucho Braga," he said, naming the head of the New Orleans mob. "If he cared enough. According to Monty, he couldn't give a flip. He's way outside the loop on this deal." "Francesca Anolli, then." I touched my nose with the tip of my index finger, then pointed back at him. "She'd send her brothers to do it. Claude and that zit-faced one," he said. "Chi Chi." "Franny's wanted a major piece of Lucho's action for years. Is Reynard in tight enough with the Anollis to set this kind of thing up that quick?" "Count on it. Monty went on the run, but couldn't think of a safe place to go. He wound up at my apartment over the bar, begging me to help him out." "Your 'favor'," he observed. About six years earlier, I had hit New Orleans after spending a year wandering the blue highways from Maine to San Diego. About the time Scat Boudreaux was carving finger knives out of bamboo in a Cong tiger cage, I was dropping out of a Catholic seminary in Chicago, after a lengthy argument with God over whether he actually existed. I went to graduate school and became a psychologist, then worked in forensics in New Hampshire, until it screwed up my head so much that I had to either run or bite the loud end of a service nine. I landed a gig as a college professor. That ended when one of my coeds claimed that I had offered her an 'A' in return for certain sexual consideration. The investigation that followed became too much of a hassle, so I resigned my tenure and went on the road, winding up where the road ended, in New Orleans. I got a job playing jazz cornet in a French Quarter dive named Holliday's, and the part-owner, Shorty, allowed me to live in an apartment over the bar. I also discovered that I was a gambling addict, but not before I got into debt to the tune of almost twenty large to a shylock loanshark named Justin Leduc. Leduc must have recognized that I had little chance of paying him back, so he put me to work as a collector. I'm a big, wide fellow. I go six and a half feet and almost 300 pounds, and I have this ugly Irish face that scares the crap out of delinquent gamblers when I come to pick up the vig. I have conscience to go with the physical package, though, and after a few months it started to burn a little. So, now I pick up the occasional favor for friends, and friends of friends. It's my way of putting a little something back into the "good" account in the karma bank, to balance out all the nasty shit I have to pull so that Leduc won't send over a couple of tough guys to break my legs. Way too many of these favors, however, have wound up interfering with the intentions of dangerous people. Some of them have made it their mission to eliminate me as a problem by eliminating me as a person. None of them have been lucky enough or good enough, I suppose. All of them are dead now. I'm not proud of it. It's just stuff that happened, as Richard Brautigan said, like lint. "So, you've got Monty hidden away somewhere?" Scat asked. "I rented a hotel room in my attorney's name, paid cash up front. He's secure for the moment. Then I started asking around, pulling in some markers, trying to find out who put out a hit on Monty Sandeck, and who was picking up the offer. Two of my contacts told me the Reynard was paying the tab. One of them fingered Chi Chi and Claude Anolli as the guys who crept Monty's place." Scat got up and started to pace the storeroom. "Man, I have told you, Gallegher. If I told you once, I told you twicet, you don't fuck with the Sicilians. You don't interfere with their cashflow, and you don't screw their women, and you sure as hell don't dick with their honor. That omerta thing only goes so far, before you find yourself on someone's shitlist." I couldn't argue with him. When Scat's right, he's right. Crazy, but right. "A couple of guys showed up at Holliday's last night," I said, quietly. "Tough guys. They asked me questions about why I was going around town making shit for Reynard." "One of your snitches has gone butt-buddy with Sly." "He pays better, I suppose. I tried to shine them on, but they know. I got a call this morning from this guy I know, Hotshot Spano." "Lucho's buddy." "Yeah. He's a golden anniversary made guy. I've helped him out once or twice. Spano called me up on the phone, talking really low, like he was afraid someone was listening in. He wanted to know what I did to piss in Francesca Anolli's grits. Finally, he said he had called just to advise me, give me a warning." "He was telling you that Franny was offering a double-header special." "More or less." Scat sat on the couch for a long time, staring at the ceiling. God only knows what he was thinking. Maybe he was trying to find a way out of this mess. Maybe he was trying to remember what he had for breakfast. Maybe he was counting the fuzzy pink bunnies he was hallucinating. Finally, he got up, without saying a word, and walked back in the storeroom. He came back a moment later with a couple of shoeboxes. He opened one, and pulled out an object wrapped in oily muslin. "Colt Government .38," he said, handing it to me. "Makes a great belly gun. I don't have time to fit you for a shoulder holster. That's a nine round clip. It don't pack the jolt of a nine or a .45, but it will get the job done in close, and I figure we ain't gonna be doing any target shooting." He unwrapped the other. "Sig Sauer nine. You could shoot the nuts offa King Kong with this piece." "You sound like a man with a plan," I said. "Just like in that shithole bar you work in," he said. "Shorty comes to you and says there's some guy at the back door with a gun wants to talk with you, just about the only thing you can do is say I better get me a gun and see what he wants." He slipped on a shoulder holster the way most people pull on their socks, and covered it with a fatigue jacket. "Okay, Gallegher," he said. "Let's go visit Mr. Reynard." * * * * * Reynard's pussy bar was called Les Jolies Blondes. It was in the heart of the tourist section of Bourbon Street, across from a drag show and two doors down from a shop that sold bawdy tee shirts and dildo vibrators. Reynard had hired some old white-haired shill to stand out front of the bar in a tuxedo and drag in the out-of-town pigeons. He thought it gave the place some class, the same way some people try to dress up toilet lids with fuzzy covers. We walked by the barker and into the club. It was like walking into a solid wall of nicotine and stale beer and noise. Rotating spotlights cut through the smoke, illuminating a trio of naked girls dancing on the stage. One of them hung upside down from an aluminum pole. The place was about half full, since it was just before sundown, mostly college kids looking to burn off a little steam and get an early start on putting their weekend load on. There was a thick, swarthy man at the bar, wearing white cotton slacks, a linen jacket, and a sport shirt. He went about five-nine, with shoulders about a yard across. He looked like a human ice cream bar. "Spanky Gallo," I said to Scat, pointing at him. "He wears a Browning automatic stashed in a shoulder holster under his right arm. He's a southpaw." "I know," Scat said. "I watched him fight Sugar Ray Leonard about twenty years ago. He got shitcanned." I looked over at Scat. "I also sold him the Browning," he said. "We're going to have to go through him to get to Reynard." "It's a privilege." I walked up to Gallo and stood in front of him. He glanced in the mirror behind the bar, and made Scat in about half a second. I glared at Spanky a little, gave him a taste of the look I use to terrorize the riffraff. He snorted and reached into his jacket. "Easy," Scat told him, and pressed the Sig Sauer into Spanky's kidney. "No probs. Guess you want to see the boss." He gingerly pulled his pistol from the holster and handed it to me. I slipped it to Scat. "Let's go see the fat man," I said. Gallo led us to a set of stairs at the far end of the bar, and up to the second floor. Sylvester Reynard kept an office on the top floor, with a big picture window he used to look out over the bar, when he was in the mood. Most of the time he didn't bother. It took a lot of effort for him. A couple of decades earlier, he had taken a shot in the throat with a beer bottle during a bar fight over on Dumaine. It screwed up his thyroid somehow, and he started blowing up like a birthday balloon. He'd tried every diet known to man, but the weight just kept rolling on. He looked like eight hundred pounds of ruddy lard poured into a suit. He sat on a loveseat, because it had been years since he could shoehorn his ass into an office chair. The loveseat was placed up on bricks behind his desk. I had heard that he slept there, and had a shower in the back of the office, and it made sense. It would take a crane to get him up and down the stairs. By the time we reached his door, I had the Colt Government out and pointed at him. Scat kept the Sig Sauer on Gallo. "Jesus, Sly," I told him. "I got one word for you. Liposuction." I think he tried to laugh, but by the time it worked its way out of all that suet it was just a series of grunts, like uh-uh-uh. "Think you're funny," he said, each word a wheezy rumble. "We need to talk." "Fuck you. Put the gun down or get out of here." I walked behind his desk and checked the drawers. He wasn't armed. I stowed the Colt in my jacket pocket. Instantly, Scat had Spanky's Browning up and out, pointing it at Sly as he kept the Sig Sauer on Spanky. "Same goes for Uncle George," Sly said. Scat didn't say anything. He didn't move. "You're going to have to compromise on that one, Sly," I said. "Scat doesn't put down his guns." "Whatever. Keep the piece, Uncle George." "What's this 'Uncle George' shit?" Spanky asked. "An old kid's show," I said. Sly stared at Scat. "Yum, yum, eat 'em up," he said, and made the grunting laugh again as he slid one arm the size of a water main up on top of the loveseat. "This the best you can do for backup, Gallegher?" "Let it slide," I said to Scat. I might as well have been talking to the wall. He hadn't moved an inch. "Okay," Reynard said. "You got me where you want me. What's the play?" "We need to talk about contracts," I said. He stared at me, his eyes like little onyx pearls squashed into king-sized pillows. "You ordered a hit on Monty Sandeck," I said. "Claude and Chi Chi Anolli showed up at his house and tried to zag him." "Monty tell you that?" "I got a call yesterday, from a well-connected source. He says I'm on the contract now." "Do tell." "I want both of them pulled back." "Mebbe you shoulda thought about that before stickin' your dick in the blender, Gallegher." "Cancel it, Sly. I mean it." "Or what, asswipe? What are you gonna do?" Scat squeezed off a round, which singed the fabric of Reynard's jacket as it passed between his arm and left breast. It went through the loveseat, and into the wall behind him. It probably blew right through the ancient brick behind the wall and maybe through another building or two before stopping. Sly might have flinched, but it was hard to tell. "Missed me, Uncle George." "It's harder to miss you than it is to hit you," Scat said. "Smaller target." "Scat's trying to make a point," I said. "I got his point," Sly said. "You think maybe you oughta ask me my side of this story?" "No." "Think again. What did Monty tell you, Gallegher? He give you some shuck about running back here after getting tagged by the Feds?" "Something like that." "Did he tell you about his own bank account down there in Me-hee-co?" I stared at him. "Monty leaves skid marks on everything he touches," he said. "This money laundering thing, yeah, I'm doin' that. But it's not my money, Gallegher. I'm untouchable on this thing. There aren't any Feds. Monty hasn't made a Mexico trip for me in over a month. You wanna know why?" "I can guess," I said, trying to turn all the numbers over in my head. "You're so fuckin' smart, got that doctorate in psychology. The word sociopath mean anything to you? I read up on it, and they should have had a picture of Monty in there. We set him up in a sweet deal. All he had to do was mule the money down to Me-hee-co, give it to the bank guy down there, and scoot on home. Nobody'd be wiser. Monty takes a coupla percent off the top, who gives a damn. Everyone gets a cut sooner or later. Monty, though, he had to get greedy. Last trip he took down south, he came back cryin' like a baby. He tol' this cocked-up story about getting robbed, said someone was waitin' for him at the airport when he got off the plane, put a gun in his spine and walked him out to a cab, let him off in downtown Oaxaca after takin' the money offa him. I don't suppose that's the story Monty tol' you though, is it?" I shook my head. "So I checked with my bank guy down there, and he called around, and it seems that Monty set up an account at another bank. He flew down with something like a hundred large, and he put it in this account, and then he came back here and tried to shovel some bullshit story up my ass. "It wasn't my money, Gallegher, get it? I can't be touched on the laundering, and it wasn't my money in the first place. I just performed a service for a fee." "The money belonged to people who bought rights from Lucho Braga." "Monty tol' you that, too?" I nodded. "Man, I'm gonna print up a deed to the Crystal City Bridge and make a cold call at your house. You'll buy anything." "Whose money was it?" "Your quarter just ran out, Gallegher. I already tol' you that Monty's dickin' you. What else do you need to know?" "Who's carrying the contract?" "Who do Claude and Chi Chi work for, stupid? Geez, do you need an instruction book to take a whiz, fer chrissakes?" "The money came from Francesca Anolli." "You didn't hear that from me. Take a hike." I turned to Scat. "What do you think?" I asked. "Shoot 'em," he said. I think that was his answer to every question. "Give me an alternative." "Fuckin' greaseballs, Slick. He's tryin' to turn you on to the Anollis, because he knows Franny has the juice to get you fried but good. He's carryin' the paper on you and Monty. I can feel it." "He's wrong," Sly said. "I'm gonna say this once, in short words so you can follow it. Monty made off with almost three hundred large of Francesca Anolli's money over the course of a year or so. After it woulda got stepped on, that means she lost maybe a hundred grand. Francesca don't give a shit about the money. She's got plenty. She can't let Monty get away with this, though, because then she's gonna look like a sucker to Lucho Braga, and he won't slice off any more prime cut for her. There ain't no contract, Gallegher. This is personal, and Francesca sent those two chowderhead brothers of hers to take Monty out. He got away, and you can bet she reamed Claude and Chi Chi out good for that." "What about the contract on me?" "Same thing. Guy came to me the other day, said you were nosin' around trying to find out who wanted to squib Monty, and that you kept mentioning my name. I owed Francesca a favor, so I gave her a call. I guess word got back to whoever called you. If I were you, I'd cut Monty loose right now, 'cause if he gets fragged, you are sure as shit gonna catch some of the shrapnel." * * * * * Holliday's isn't your typical French Quarter bar. First of all, it's hard to find. The front door is in an alleyway connecting Toulouse with Decatur, about five doors down from what used to by Molly's, which used to sell the best six-dollar fried oyster platter in town. Second, we don't go out for the tourist trade. Holliday's is more like a neighborhood tavern. You find it by word of mouth, mostly, and the people who come in are usually regulars. The bartender at Holliday's is a squared off hardass named Shorty, who came to the Quarter after spending half his life as a roustabout for a traveling carnival. The parts of him that aren't muscle are mostly scar tissue, and he snarls a lot. He has a good heart, though, and he lets me stay in an apartment over the bar pretty much for free. In return, I play a jazz cornet there six nights a week, and help out with some general housekeeping chores. It works for me. I called Monty Sandeck and asked him to meet me at Holliday's. He argued a little at first, said he didn't want to go out in public, but I insisted. Maybe part of me hoped he would get clipped on the walk over from the hotel, so I wouldn't have to face him down with what I had learned. He was waiting in the bar when I got there. Scat didn't say a word. He just disappeared from my side when I walked into the door. One moment he was there, the next he was gone. Scat does that a lot. It can be a real hoot. It was still early in the evening, so the bar was empty. Even Shorty was gone, probably off to eat before the regulars started to arrive. It was just Monty and me, and my increasingly growing temper. "Check out of the hotel," I told Monty as I walked behind the bar to grab a Dixie beer from the cooler. I didn't offer him one. "Beg pardon?" he asked. He was a head shorter than me, but he worked out, so he was a lot leaner and tighter. His face showed every one of his forty-five years. All you had to do was count the lines around his eyes and forehead. Monty worried a lot. After my conversation with Reynard, I had a good idea why. "I don't want you abusing my lawyer's name anymore." "What are you talking about?" "I don't mind taking chances for other people once in a while," I told him, "but I'm not taking it up the chute for anyone. I just got back from a meeting with Reynard." "Yeah?" "You left out some details in your story. Because of that, I have to go to Franny Anolli tomorrow with my dick in my hand and try to convince her I'm not trying to piss in her well. I don't like doing that." "What about me?" "What about you, Monty? Seems to me that a guy can live like a king in Mexico on a few hundred grand. What in hell are you doing still in the country?" He sat down at one of the tables and rubbed his face over and over again with both hands. "If you'd come to me and told me the truth," I said, "I'd have told you to get lost. Anyone who steals from people like Lucho or the Anollis is asking for what comes next. You should know that." "I run to Mexico," he said, "and they'll find me." "Serves you right." "You don't mean that." "You want me to say it again?" I pulled the Colt Government from my jacket pocket and laid it on the bar. "Maybe I ought to zip you myself and save Chi Chi the trouble. Maybe they'll let me off the hook." "You can't do that!" I tried to give him my most menacing scowl, but I was just too tired to pull it off. "No, I suppose I can't. But I also can't keep protecting you. Best I can do at this point is intermediate for you." "I don't understand." "Yeah, you do. You just keep looking for some way to come out on top of this situation. That's not going to happen. So, it's like this. You can walk out the door and take your chances that you can get to Mexico, grab your stash, and somehow disappear before someone shags your sorry ass, or we can make arrange a deal." "What kind of deal?" "How much do you have salted away?" "Around two-hundred-seventy-five grand." "That's in the Oaxaca account. I mean how much have you got?" "That's it, Gallegher." I picked up the Colt and pulled back the slide. "I can make a better deal without you." "Okay! Okay! There's more. Maybe a hundred. Scattered around." "You can lay your hands on it?" "Yeah." "All of it?" "Sure." I put the gun down on the bar. "All right, then, Monty. I'm going to try to give you a fresh start. You'll be poor, but you'll be breathing. Understand?" He choked on it a little, but he finally nodded. I took him up to my apartment over the bar, and made a few telephone calls. First, I called Hotshot Spano. Hotshot was an old-line gangster. He'd come up in the Bonnano organization in New York, and made his bones before he could legally vote. He specialized in double-deuce wet work. He'd just show up at your home one evening, and before he left you'd have one in your ear, one under the chin, and one in the back of your head. Thing like that can screw up your whole day. Hotshot was cashiered out in the eighties, though, when the mob started infiltrating mainline businesses. Maintaining institutional button men was too much of a liability, especially when it was cheaper to contract out that kind of work. Hotshot was sent down to New Orleans to help Lucho Braga run the French Quarter operations, and he'd been here ever since. "This is Gallegher," I said, when he answered the phone. "Pat, good to hear from you. Word has it that you paid Reynard a visit today." "You still don't miss much." "I guess not." "I need a favor." He didn't say anything. I suppose he didn't want to appear prematurely conciliatory. "I'm going to try to set up a meet with Francesca Anolli tomorrow. I could use someone to intercede in case things get overheated." "You think that's smart, meeting them like that?" I told him my plan. "It's risky," he said. "Better than waiting for Claude Anolli to stroll into the bar one night." "Let me talk with Lucho. He says it's okay, and I'll try to be there." I thanked him, and after we said goodbye I hung up. * * * * * Next I called Francesca Anolli. I had met Franny once or twice over the years, at parties tossed by Justin Leduc, the loan shark I collected for. She was a genuine head turner, all long legs and dark flawless skin, with piercing eyes and a strong Roman nose. She looked a lot like Cher, I suppose, except that she hadn't invested the gross national product of a small country in cosmetic surgery. There was something cold and malignant behind those piercing eyes however, which kept most guys at arms length. Franny Anolli wanted power more than she wanted love, and she didn't lift a finger without deciding how much it would put in the bank. Claude answered the phone. He was the good-looking brother, the lady-killer. The second of the Anolli children, he had been doted on, first by his mother and later by Franny. There were rumors of a distasteful, incestuous side to their relationship, but I tried not to think about that while I was on the phone with him. "Francesca Anolli, please," I said. "Who wants her?" "This is Pat Gallegher." "Fuck off." He hung up the phone. I called Hotshot Spano again. We spoke for a couple of minutes, and he told me to call Franny back in a quarter hour. I waited twenty minutes, and dialed the Anollis' number. Claude answered. "Fuck off, yourself," I said. "Just one moment, Mr. Gallegher. I'll see if Francesca is in." There was an edge to his voice, as if her were biting the words one by one as they left his mouth, but it was clear he had gotten the message. There are few things more impressive than the judicious use of juice. Several seconds passed. "Hello," Francesca said. "Ms. Anolli. This is Pat Gallegher." "Yes, Claude told me." "I have Monty Sandeck with me." "Thank you for calling. I'll send someone right over." "I don't think so. I'd rather that we meet in person. I'd like to talk about negotiations." "Negotiations?" Her voice was like ruby port drizzled over vanilla ice cream, crisp, warm, and solicitous. I imagined that a cobra would have a voice like hers. "I think we've both been exploited by Monty, but I can't be part of him getting whacked. At least not yet." "Do you have anything... interesting to offer?" "I think I might, but I don't want to go into it over the telephone. And I don't want to do it in a private place. I'd feel safer in the open. No offense intended, but I'm not exactly new at this." "No, I suppose not. Do you have a place in mind?" I told her. She thought about it for a long time. Finally she said, "Seven o'clock, tomorrow morning." "We'll be there." * * * * * At six-forty-five the next morning, Monty and I walked into St. Louis Cemetery. We had spent the previous half-hour scouting the territory, to make sure there were no hidden troops waiting to take us out. Monty looked like shit. He hadn't slept all night. Neither had I, but for different reasons. I pointed to a statue roughly in the center of the cemetery, a winged angel with arms spread, looking down on a mausoleum. The water table in New Orleans starts about two inches above the ground, so the dead are entombed in marble and granite aboveground crypts rather than buried. "We'll meet them there," I said. "Let's get comfortable." Around seven, a black Lincoln Town Car turned into the cemetery, and wove around the access road until it reached a point about a hundred yards from us. Both front doors opened, and Chi Chi Anolli got out with a guy I recognized, from my good old bad old days in the gambling houses, as muscle used by the Anollis. As they walked in our direction, I tried to remember his name. Les, Lenny, Lanny -- something like that. "I thought Claude was coming," Monty whined to me. "Shut up," I said. When Mom and Pop Anolli got finished using up all their good genes on Claude, they must have swept the floor to make Chi Chi. He was about my height, but he carried his weight in less fortunate places. He had bad skin and halitosis, and his hair looked like a poorly made bed. He was greasy and malignant, and if he hadn't had Claude and Francesca looking out for him he probably would have wound up in a geek show at the carnival. Chi Chi and his enforcer stopped about twenty feet from us, their hands in their coat pockets. "Is Francesca in the car?" I asked. "Sure, sure," Chi Chi said. "I don't think she's gonna come down just right yet, though." "Yeah, she is," I said. "My business is with her, Cheech, not you." "Yeah, well, about that, Gallegher. We talked about it a lot last night, and Franny, she's got second thoughts about this deal you cooked up. Fact is, I'm amazed you're standing up for this sack of shit Sandeck in the first place." "It isn't my first choice, but I made this particular sack of shit a promise. I plan to keep it. After what I found out last night, I'd just as soon kick his ass myself, but I suppose that can wait until we complete our business. Call your sister down here, Chi Chi. Let's get this over with." Chi Chi lumbered over to me, and put his face within six inches of mine. His breath smelled like someone dumped a trashcan in his mouth and sewed it shut for a week. "Fuck you, Gallegher. We don't deal with crap like you." He backed off a couple of feet, and turned to the other guy. "Kill them, Lonnie." Okay, so the guy's name was Lonnie, I thought. One less thing to think about. Things happened very quickly. Lonnie pulled his hands out of his coat pockets. In each one he held an automatic pistol. It took a lot of coordination to shoot two people at the same time with different guns, and I admired his ambition. Monty screamed and started to turn to run. I pulled the Colt out of my own jacket and whacked him right over the ear with it. He fell to his knees, cradling his head. Scat Boudreaux stepped out from behind a mausoleum to Lonnie's right, carrying a sawed-off twelve gauge Mossberg pump shotgun loaded with double-ought, and squeezed off two rounds. The first doubled Lonnie at the waist, the second lifted him off the ground and knocked him over, leaving a fine pink mist in the morning air where he had been standing. I grabbed Chi Chi by his shirt collar, whipped the Colt across the bridge of his nose, and spun him around to lie him face-down in the dirt. I screwed the barrel of the Colt into his left ear. Monty got back to his feet, and started to move away. "Scat, if that asshole tries to run, kneecap him. Understand?" "Finest kind," Scat said, leveling the Mossberg at Monty, who froze instantly. I turned my attention back to Chi Chi Anolli. "This is not how you negotiate!" I yelled at him. "Up yours," he mumbled. His breath raised a small cloud of dust from the ground. "You are so fuckin' dead, Gallegher, you understand? I wouldn't want to be you, you stupid mick son of a bitch. Whatever you do here today is gonna get squared, in spades." "I don't think so," Hotshot Spano said, as he walked from behind the same mausoleum where Scat had been hiding. He stode over to the place where I had Anolli pinned to the ground, and knelt down. "I am very disappointed," he told Chi Chi. "Gallegher came here under a white flag, that I personally guaranteed. That meant he had safe passage. You had no right to whiz him. Who am I, Chi Chi?" Chi Chi tried to struggle a little, but it was hard for him, with the Colt wedged up against his eardrum. "Who am I?" Hotshot Spano demanded again. "You're Hotshot Spano," Chi Chi mumbled. "And who do I work for?" "You work for Lucho Braga." "That's right. You fuck with me, and you fuck with Braga. You want to fuck with Braga?" Chi Chi seemed to think about it for a second, as if he really needed to. It was one of the simple questions, like Do you really want your balls kicked up into your throat? "No." "I checked. Franny's not in the car. That means we're gonna have to do this by remote control." He pulled out his cell phone, and dialed Francesca Anolli's telephone number. The deal took about five minutes to complete. It was pretty simple. Monty Sandeck would give back the two-hundred-eighty thousand he'd stolen from the Anollis, along with a twenty percent vig. Then he'd disappear, leave the country. Monty agreed that if he ever showed up in New Orleans again, the Anollis would have carte blanche to turn him into sausages. If Francesca or her brothers tried to welsh on the deal, it would be considered as if they had cheated Lucho Braga, which would be very bad for them. Hotshot closed the cell phone and placed it back in his coat pocket. "Anything else?" he asked. I still had Chi Chi pinioned underneath me. The Colt was still drilled into the side of his head. "Yeah, one thing," I said. "Listen to me, Chi Chi. Nobody would blame me right now if I blew your brains two feet into the dirt. I'm not going to do that, though. I'm going to give you a free pass. You know what that means?" "Yeah," he mumbled. "No, I don't think so. I'm giving you your life, for whatever that's worth. You owe me for that. This is a blood debt, Chi Chi. It means that, sometime in the future, you owe me a free pass. Understand?" "I got it." I pulled the Colt back from his head, and stood up. He rolled over and sat in the dirt, rubbing his ear. "This is the way it is," Hotshot told Chi Chi, standing over him. "You just acknowledged this blood debt to Gallegher, in my presence. It's omerta. You understand that, Cheech?" "I understand." "It's a debt of honor. Gallegher had you, and he let you live. You agreed to return the favor someday. I expect, and Lucho expects, that you will keep that promise. You back out on it, and you have to deal with me." Chi Chi nodded. "You don't want to deal with me, do you?" Chi Chi shook head. "Good boy, then." He held out his hand, and Chi Chi took it. Hotshot helped him to his feet, and brushed off his jacket. He turned to me. "Not like the old days, Gallegher. Not like the old days." "What about Lonnie?" Chi Chi asked. "Don't worry," Hotshot said, looking around at all the aboveground crypts. "We'll find someplace for him." He put his arm around Anolli's shoulders and started walking him back to the Lincoln. I turned, stowed the Colt in my pants, and hit Monty as hard as I could in the face. He yelped as he spun and fell into the dirt, rolled up into a fetal position on his knees. Blood dripped into the dust. Scat walked up to me, cradling the Mossberg in his arms. He said, "So, um, what do you want to do about breakfast?" Sometimes, Scat Boudreaux scares even me. The End Richard Helms is a forensic psychologist working in the courts in his home state of North Carolina. Before deciding to go to college in his twenties, he made a living (sort of) as an actor/singer/dancer. After a stab at radio, he went to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he blew through six majors in two years before settling on psychology, which seemed to be the easiest way to make a living. Boy, was he wrong. Helms is an expert in sex crimes, and is a past president of the North Carolina Association for Management and Treatment of Sex Offenders. He is recognized as a courtroom expert, and has provided testimony in hundreds of court hearings. He has also made presentations on the assessment and treatment of sex offenders at local, state, and national conferences. Until hanging up his helmet in June of 1999, Helms drove racing cars for 28 years, taking the wheel of stock cars, sprint and enduro karts, modified midgets, three-quarter midgets, and formula cars. Today, besides writing, he enjoys reading, gourmet cooking, amateur astronomy, building stringed musical instruments, rooting for the Charlotte Hornets, and spending time with his family. Richard Helms lives in Weddington, North Carolina, with his lovely spouse Elaine, their two children Alex and Rachel, and their four cats.