“How far the fuck gone am I?”
My voice cracked as I formed the words.
“You’re dehydrated, but you just formed a cogent question. That seems to be an improvement.”
“So, to what do I owe this intervention?”
“While she was cleaning out your wallet, your girlfriend got a little worried about you, found my number in your things and dialed my disposable cell from your disposable cell. Did you have any credit cards? You might want to think about cancelling them.”
“I was told not everybody’s right for an American Express card.”
“Well that’s one thing.”
“Do you do this for all your clients?”
“You’re not my client.”
“I meant your other clients.”
She sat in the room’s desk chair, legs crossed, tall paper coffee cup on a chair arm, watching the guy check my pulse and blood pressure.
“He’s a nurse. Had some licensure issues. Sometimes sings the national anthem at high school sporting events, though.”
The guy looked down at me and smiled.
“How’s your Pagliacci?” I asked. Yeah, I went to a really good high school.
He just focused on the drip.
“So, all this trying to get me to work for your clients?”
“They weren’t willing to take `fuck no’ for an answer and asked for one more conversation. If this is what it takes.” She lifted her shoulders.
I massaged my forehead a bit. “I did say that. Sometimes cops dispense with the pleasantries.”
“I’ve worked with cops. I’m aware. Should I enumerate the reasons you need the gig about now?”
“My attorney already did that. Actually, it was more of a list of reasons I need to win the lottery, but same difference.”
I sat up carefully, adjusting the sheet to protect my modesty while the Singing Nurse gave me a little play in the IV tube.
“A prosecutor may decide to take another run at me, my legal fees are already in orbit, and you can’t win child custody when your life’s in the toilet. Is there any more of that coffee? Meanwhile, the wife of my dead partner’s taken it upon herself to make sure I never catch crooks in this town again.”
Rose passed me another bottle with liquid that glowed green.
“Caffeine’s not good when you’re dehydrated.”
“I’m in a cheap hotel drinking alien’s blood, and I have no idea where my ex-wife took my daughter. With a guy named Finn. Who might like little girls. Caffeine’s the least of my worries.”
“I should mention my clients are willing to pay for this next conversation. Regardless of your decision after. So, any thoughts about what you’ll do once we give your pants back?”
“I suppose the cash the hooker took is long gone.”
She took a latte sip and sat quietly.
“I could probably take a meeting,” I said. “Let me powder my face.”
A day later, Mrs. Holst had had a new haircut.
I think they call it a bob, mostly chin length all around with a longer parenthesis of blond on the right, curling under the slight cleft in her chin. When there are things you can’t control, you fiddle with the things you can.
I kept my shades on as I neared the bench where she sat near the Riverwalk. Her dress was mint green, almost the color of the sports drink and a little blinding in the midmorning sunlight.
“Your husband couldn’t make it?”
“We thought a crowd might draw attention.”
She picked up her purse, got to her feet and started along the sidewalk so I fell in beside her, matching the pace she set with long legs.
I’d dropped my courtroom slash interview suit at a dry cleaner, so with jeans and a striped sports shirt under a light tweed jacket, I looked enough like a slightly upscale tourist.
“So, you wanted a little more conversation?”
“You left so abruptly, we never got to an offer the other night. Let me cut through the small talk. We thought the dollar figure might help convince you.”
We made our way down to an outdoor café where bistro tables with bright flowers as centerpieces were shielded from the street by vibrant green plants in planters. We settled a few tables down from other patrons.
“What do you think?”
“Seems nice.”
“I meant about what we were discussing.”
“He’s clearly a man capable of terrible things.”
“Finding someone capable of dealing with a man capable of terrible things isn’t as easy as you’d think.”
A waiter arrived and selected a couple of glasses from the assortment in front of us, filling those with ice water. A Bloody Mary would have been nice, but we ordered a fruit plate and sent him away.
“Nice you think I’m capable.”
She let that ride. “We’re prepared to make the offer of $250,000 delivered in two increments,” she said. “One fourth now. The rest when your job’s complete.”
“That would take care of the gap my money manager has spotted in my retirement fund.”
“We don’t have to worry about college funds now. Before you ask, if things should go wrong, we realize it might be hard to get a refund on the early portion. That’s why it’s small, but it’s also a show of good faith.”
I nodded.
“You need the money, Mr. Reardon. Ms. Cantor is good at what she does. She’s filled us in on your situation.”
I wondered how much she knew.
“I have to ask one obvious question,” I said.
A tick of her head suggested I proceed.
“What if I could find some kind of proof that would lead to an arrest?”
“We’ve had private investigators from a couple of big firms and paid a lot of money, hoping.”
I suspected I’d visited some of those firms recently.
“I don’t think some one-man Sam Spade move on your part’s going to get anywhere,” she said.
“I’m going to have to sniff around anyway to prep for anything. If that avenue were to become feasible?”
“It’s unlikely, and you couldn’t guarantee a conviction, could you?”
I lifted my hands. “People get out of jail all the time.”
“Forgive me then if I’ve hardened to the promise of a victim impact statement in court providing any kind of closure. Mr. Alexeeva is better connected now than he was a few years ago. He has friends and he has good lawyers too. He’s aspirational.”
That inner cold I’d noticed at dinner became evident again. A sunny day and a bright colored dress couldn’t hide it.
And slowly it sank in. Regardless of him being a bad man, even the devil, we were sitting here putting a dollar figure on a man’s life. As a cop, I’d always been cognizant of the fact I was sending someone to a grim fate as I put a case together. Usually it wasn’t a death sentence, but Angola, where the state prison sat, always loomed as a possibility. You may have seen documentaries about the place. The farm. The inmates wear white. Some of them are even sorry, but they’re not leaving. I always had to keep in the back of my mind I was working for the victims, looking for someone who’d harmed someone else.
One kid, we’d tracked down for raping and murdering his date. He was a true product of the system. He’d been in and out of lockups since about age 13. He’d been abused in multiple ways even with the protections that were supposed to be in place.
He’d been out of lockup about two weeks when a friend introduced him to a girl. They’d gone for pizza, a movie and then they’d looked for a secluded spot off a roadside for privacy. Everything that had been done to him had emerged again in the front seat of the car he’d borrowed from an aunt.
We ran him down easily enough when the body was found, dumped by a canal. DNA confirmed everything that had happened. He hadn’t quite looked like a monster when we’d cornered him at his aunt’s in a back bedroom. Sweaty, disheveled, wild-eyed, he was like any other scared teenager we collared.
&
nbsp; The whole time the trial was going on, I kept the autopsy of the victim in mind and all that had been done to her. The kid dodged the death penalty with the diligent effort of his lawyer, and they sent him to the farm. Life sentence.
Justice was done as well as justice can be these days, but when the news came that inmates had held him down, helpless and screaming, and cut his testicles off, it had hit me hard, a cold, clenched horror in my gut.
Being asked to carry out this sentence still seemed a little different, even with word of the Holsts’ dead girls, but I willed my insides to calm. I had a living kid to think of. I had a possible retrial if I was seen stepping out of line, especially to do vigilante work.
“What about expenses?” I asked. “In theory, I’d need a weapon, some details would need to be worked out. I may need to enlist someone to help me.”
“How much attention to logistics is needed?”
I could see why her husband had sent her to negotiate.
“You’re well aware he’s never going to be readily unguarded. He’s got to be isolated at the right time. The deed has to be done….”
“Corner him, tell him why you’re there and put a bullet in his brain.”
The cold core was very real.
“You’d like to see the deed done. I’d like to ride away from it. This hefty amount is going to go fast if I have to spend it on defense against a murder charge with strikes already against me.”
I felt cold sweat just thinking about that. I had a flash of myself playing catch with Jasso for eternity. It wasn’t a good flash. I didn’t want to go back.
“How much do you foresee?”
“Could go another $100,000 just in preparation.”
I had no idea how much I needed to kill a man, but I knew the take home pay needed to be high, not incrementally eaten away. Worst case, she’d say no and I wouldn’t have to kill a man.
Another man.
I’d still be broke. Everything has a down side.
“I’m going to need to talk to my husband.”
She slipped a hand into her bag.
“I’m going to recommend not doing that over the phone.”
“I can be discreet, Mr. Reardon.”
She slipped up from her seat and over to the edge of the sidewalk, pacing parallel to the little black fence that bordered the sitting area, cell to her ear. I sipped my coffee.
“Okay,” she said when she returned.
I should have asked for a full half a million.
Chapter 10
Speaking of discretion, I needed help from Richard Jasso, and a phone call obviously wasn’t an option. That meant some of the expense money would go for the four-hour drive back to North Louisiana for a face-to-face on a visitation day.
My name on the visitor log would be recorded. That might not look good, but the conversation wouldn’t be recorded, and Jasso was serving enough life sentences that he wouldn’t cave and testify for any new accommodation short of being set free at this point. The state didn’t have that quality of mercy.
I’d had plenty of talks with him over the time we’d been in N-5 together. Jasso had offered long tales on longer, hot afternoons. I think he’d decided to become an informant because he’d grown weary of general population and having to look over his shoulder anyway, but he had it as good as it was going to get for him.
He liked being away from the world of Angola, though David Wade was still prison. Don’t make any mistake about that.
I think he missed Angola sometimes too. He’d regaled me with accounts of stupid cons he’d known through the years either on the street or in the bunk houses, guys who’d burglarized houses while wearing ankle monitors or fallen asleep in cars they were trying to steal.
He also told me tales of successful criminals. Some were involved in activities in which he was a participant. Others he’d learned about since being locked up. It wasn’t hard to ascertain some of the pseudonymous tales from people carrying on his work on the outside.
Those were the guys I needed. They were the ones I anticipated paying some of the Holsts’ expense money while maintaining plausible deniability. I hoped to avoid being one of the stupid criminals too and to always give an attorney wiggle room to argue reasonable doubt.
Why did I visit Jasso? Well, life’s tough on the inside, and I wanted to offer moral support to a guy who’d protected me.
My gut tightened as I tooled past a nondescript white fence and approached the manicured entrance where a neat rectangle of shrubs bordered the white-on-black sign that proclaimed I’d reached a correctional center.
The grounds, with numbered brown towers and coils of concertina wire were further off the main road, and I felt my mood take a downturn as I headed toward the parking lot with all of that in sight. It’s considered medium security, and I’ve written of the protective unit, but it’s not the country club you might be thinking of. There are lots and lots of bars inside. Lots of men locked up, and a lot of punitive turning to vindictive. A guy escaped sometime back, touching off a lot of scrutiny about procedures, and that led to tightened screws, no play on prison language intended.
I suppose I owed the place a debt. It had kept me alive and all my body parts attached, and I’d read a lot of books in there, more than at that great high school. More than in the time I’d spent in college.
I’d dabbled with correspondence courses as well. Still, I didn’t harbor warm feelings. I didn’t really want to go back in and revisit the library or see my old cell.
I knew the fear that they would not let me out again was irrational, but it made me question my contemplated course of action one more time, especially once I’d stepped through the metal gates and a black door that had windows but still slammed and locked behind me. I endured ribbing from guards who recognized me. They had nothing really original to say, but the suggestions about the outside and refuge I must have felt here darkened my mood even more.
I waited a while, though it wasn’t as bad as some Saturdays from what I’d heard, and eventually Jasso and I were facing each other in the visiting area where families posed for photos in front of colorful backdrops that included a seascape and one with cartoon characters for families with kids. I’d tutored a few guys who had to live with only those snippets of real life. It always reminded me Sandra had never brought Juli up here to see me.
For the best, I told myself, though it reminded me that she would never bring her here if I returned. I’d have to hope for the kid wanting to know her father when she reached her teen years. Or older.
Jasso wore familiar blue chambray like the other inmates, his lion’s mane looking a tad more grey, his face a little more wrinkled even though it hadn’t been that long since I’d seen him, and he had a thinness that came with age and showed in his forearms and the way the skin fit at his neck.
“Couldn’t find anyone to talk to you on the outside?” he asked as he settled, drawing a squeak from the plastic chair.
“I realized we didn’t have pictures together and I thought I’d rectify that before you got older and died.”
“Well, cheers,” he drawled from deep in his throat. “Surprised they let you in. As a guest.”
“I filled out all the paperwork.”
Praying it wouldn’t become an evidentiary exhibit somewhere down the road. The optics weren’t good on any front, but I was just a guy who’d made it out paying an obligatory visit.
“Besides,” I said, “when they heard it was a pilgrimage for a fresh dose of your wisdom, they opened the gates on religious grounds.”
“You’d think more people would seek me out,” he said. “I need better PR. I could be quite a consultant on Zen and the art of tractor repair.”
Jasso read a lot too.
He coughed now, rattling phlegm somewhere in his chest.
“You doing all right?” I asked.
“It’s not bad.” He cleared his throat again. “Nobody’s slipping me extra cigarettes, so that’ll actually improve. They’ve
got some new investigators in sniffing around, so everyone on staff’s got their backs up, but you know how it goes.”
“What are they investigating?”
“Something new on that escape. Who knew what, when. That sort of thing. How’s life for you?”
“Rocky but better than in here.”
“Shittiest day free better than the best inside,” he said. “Exit through the gift shop, you’ll find that on a tee shirt.”
I chuckled with him for a while: The Saints, state of the world, what the girls were wearing on the streets of the French Quarter on hot days. It was easy to forget his past, and easy to forget what I was up to. Just two guys shooting the shit.
“What do you really need, son?” he asked following still more small talk. He could have read it in my manner and body language, though he knew I hadn’t come just to see his face.
I provided a vague outline, just enough to give him a sense of what I needed without offering anything he could testify about. Maybe he could be swayed by a promise of more cigs.
He slouched in his chair and leaned an elbow on the chair back. He was more than six feet, and he looked like an aging basketball star for a moment.
“Is that really what you want do with your life?” he asked, reading between the lines.
“I had a father, Richard.”
He lifted his hands in surrender.
“I’ve turned it over a few times,” I said. “Stupidity looks the same from all angles.”
He laced his fingers behind his head. “It’s a pleasure to see the student aspire to be like his sensei. Keep it up, you’ll find yourself in the desirable position I’ve attained.”
“I don’t have a history of great decisions,” I said. “Or weighing risks well.”
“There’s not any other way?”
“I’m in a hurry. I don’t have a lot of options and a kid to think about. More problems than we need to go into.”
“That’s how a lot of people you can look around at right now got where they are. A lot of these guys never had any options. Society doesn’t quite know what to do about that, so they just get dumped in these luxury accommodations. `We whisper together. Are quiet and meaningless. As wind in dry grass or rats’ feet over broken glass in our dry cellar.’”
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