The chilled air was like a cool drape settling over me, offering almost instant relief to the outside heat that’d I’d almost become numb to.
Despite the ambiguity of time, the place wasn’t as it would be later. It was far less crowded, dappled with that daytime casino gaggle of polo shirts and comfortable cross-trainer sneakers, ladies in spandex with sweaters and hats, a few soccer moms carrying plastic coin cups as they padded between glowing banks of slots.
I generally fit in and reminded myself I could be less conspicuous than Kenny and that I’d worried overly about being identified from surveillance video. I scanned a while before I located Holton and Taras near a circle of machines under a cluster of artificial palms.
I took a seat at video poker game in a covered section across a tiled walkway, not at the best angle but that made me less conspicuous. I could glance back from time to time like I was looking for a drink waitress while I tried to remember what I’d read about algorithms, card selections, and payout schedules. Then I started pumping in coins, wishing I’d brought more. I’d soon lost enough to make me look like a guy who needed a shot.
When I chanced my looks back, I saw Taras standing beside Holton’s fleur-de-lis decorated chair, their conversation looking relaxed but serious. She appeared to be confiding the issues or tastes we’d discussed. Her expression looked earnest as she talked, probably working in details about Moates’ supposed proclivities along with his desire for an American girl with a clean and virginal demeanor he couldn’t quite get from a call girl.
After she’d spoken a while, Taras nodded back a few times then raised a finger to draw over a drink waitress in a little black uniform, placed an order then put a hand on Holton’s arm. Reassuring?
I hoped for that as I turned back to my screen. I appeared to be on the road to a royal flush if I could get a Jack of Diamonds. I made the appropriate taps to the screen and promptly lost. Nice to have a reminder that, despite getting this far, luck was not on my side. I was glad gambling had never held that much allure for me.
I pumped a few more coins in and begged a free drink from a waitress as a prop and looked Hollie’s way as I delivered my order.
Her acting seemed to continue on the mark. The brow was wrinkled, the head tilts and nod expressive, and I read reassurance from Taras, or perhaps I projected my hopes onto his posture. He spoke for a while then, and she listened. I allowed myself a side-saddle perch on my chair as if waiting on a drink refresh, looking past them but angling my attention their way.
The casino light gave her red hair a metallic look as locks bobbed a bit with a final, affirmative. Then Taras reached over, gave her shoulder a squeeze along with a final smile, and he turned and headed back toward the entrance.
I waited for her turn. She spotted me and saw in my eyes even across the distance that she shouldn’t approach. We’d talk later, outside the gaze of casino surveillance cameras. Who knew who Alexeeva knew?
She did nothing to acknowledge me and slid off her chair, shouldering her handbag and heading for the exit.
My drink arrived then. I took it off the tray myself with a smile and sipped a long, cool sip and let it burn a fiery path down my esophagus.
“He’s going to see what he can do,” she said on the phone a little while later.
I’d finished my drink and absorbed its calm.
I reassured her some more that it would be over soon. Then I had stepped back into sunlight and headed to the streetcar stop to hop a ride, heading nowhere in particular. I just knew the streetcar didn’t have drink service, and I didn’t need to risk a refill that would encourage another and another.
I sat by a window as we clacked along the route, making a journey that would ultimately be a circle if I sat long enough. That felt oddly symbolic. If I completed one circle, I’d have another circle to begin to try and make it around, having completed the one before that began with the death of my partner and my shooting of Leo Maier. So it would go. I just had to keep following Jasso’s admonition and find the best path on that crooked road, my fool’s run for which I’d formulated a grim and sordid scenario because it was a world that lent itself to that, where the darkest of supply and demands were identified and met. I didn’t feel particularly proud in the moment because I’d found the imagination to devise it, even though it was the hand I’d been dealt.
Chapter 41
I had a feeling that someone had been in my place when I made it home. I guess the whispers of Alexeeva’s magic worked on me as well.
The door didn’t really have signs of tampering, though a snap gun might not have left a lot of signs, and I couldn’t rule out the window latches. A good burglar can jar some varieties open with a few carefully placed nudges. I had one of the winning varieties.
My laptop was still stowed where I’d left it, and more importantly so was the handgun. So, I hadn’t been burglarized. I couldn’t find anything really out of place, but I had some sense someone had been in the place. Or I was incredibly paranoid and imagining things, not a bad way to be in my position.
In spite of that, I took the PSM out, checked the clip then went through the house with it pressed at my side. I would have cleared a dwelling as a cop with a little more speed. I crept here, slipping through doorways and opening closets with caution, hairs on my neck doing a samba.
Maybe the few things hanging in my bedroom closet were spaced differently. Maybe I’d left some papers arranged in a different order on the dresser, but I couldn’t pinpoint a sure sign anyone had touched anything. Was Ronnie’s wife’s makeshift gumshoe, Culler, still sniffing around? He’d developed more finesse or found an assistant if so.
I thought of Slavic sorcery again. Could that have primed my brain for this experience? I checked the floor in front of the windows and didn’t spot any shoe prints or dirt that seemed out of place, did one more sweep and vowed to keep my eyes open for signs of anything out of the ordinary, like a Metairie cop sniffing around. If we got close to Dagney, I didn’t need a loose thread from my past throwing the whole process off.
Maybe I was in a game. It was a good reminder to keep looking over my shoulder.
Chapter 42
I’d never been much of a sailor, so Arch was at the commands when we took the runabout out for a test drive on a sunny afternoon a couple of days later. Seemed like a good idea, and I thought it might calm my nerves more than sitting and staring at my apartment walls was doing.
The boat was a glossy blue and white, about 20 feet from bow to stern and fairly cozy with a couple of bucket seats up front, a bench seat in the back, or aft as those of us who’ve read a nautical glossary say. A couple of spots on the bow awaited the adventurous.
Arch made the handling look easy enough as he cruised away from the launch area and headed toward open water, tipping his cap to a couple of fishermen as he cruised past without creating much of a wake. It looked like steering a car.
He eased the throttle forward as we rounded a bend and cruised out past a stretch of shoreline where people stood casting fishing lines from the bank.
We picked up speed as we gained a little distance from shore, and wind swept around us, making the afternoon heat insignificant, and the front of the boat bobbed a bit until he cut the throttle back a tad.
I put a hand on my floppy-brimmed hat and looked back at the whipping white lines of water stretching out behind us now, snaking and crisscrossing the lake’s surface.
“What speed do we get up to?”
“Faster than they want you to go out here,” he said. “And faster than we should need to. It’s got a customized stern drive.”
I nodded, figuring that must be good.
Arch made a few turns of the wheel to stabilize then shoved the throttle forward and put my stomach in my throat. He gave a laugh as I gripped an arm on the seat.
“We’ll get her out of that channel on the fishing boat then transfer you and the girl to this for a run. If he turns out to have a fleet sequestered somewhere to follow
us, we should be able to outrun it.”
He eased the throttle and curved the boat a bit, slowing to an idle.
“You want to give it a try in case you need to take the girl and go while Kenny and I run interference?”
I checked my life jacket zipper then traded seats with him, maintaining balance well enough to appear respectable.
“You got a problem with the water?” he asked.
“Nah, just with people shooting at me across it.” Plus, I had flashbacks of trawling for bodies. Somebody else did the steering in those days too.
“It’ll be dark. Probably.”
I took the seat at the wheel, tested my grip and gave it a few gentle turns then let him talk me through moving the throttle forward and keeping the bounce down with the bow.
After a while, I had a feel for the handling and was testing the speed in long, straight runs across the open lake, churning up minimal spray around us. We cruised out toward the causeway before I looped it back and guided the throttle down until we were at a stop.
“I think it’ll do,” I said. “How much is it setting the Holst’s back?”
“Nothing if we get it back in one piece.”
“In the unlikelihood that there are complications from this well-planned endeavor?”
“Forty grand ought to do it.”
“I’ll let you drive home.”
“I was figuring you probably didn’t know the way.”
I looked around at the open water in all directions then spotted the causeway again.
“I could probably figure it out.”
“We might want to work on probably,” he said as he settled into the captain’s chair.
“Yeah.”
Chapter 43
“Friday night.”
I was having a smoothie at my new favorite morning spot. I put a hand over one ear to drown out other voices so I could hear Hollie.
“We have a go?”
“A go. Alexeeva’s offering it as sort of a sealing of the deal ceremony.”
“Do we know it’s Dagney Holst?”
“Ryan was shown a book of photos. Girls in evening gowns. Based on the computer-aged photo you gave him, he’s pretty sure Dagney was in the mix, and he pointed her out as one of two, his list. The guy who did the showing promised either’s a virgin.”
We’d be rescuing someone either way, so there was that.
“Interesting to know the selling points work in these kinds of transactions. Are we going to the lake?”
“I thought that might make you happy. Yes, the lake. Apparently, there are little soirees for clients and…girls to meet.”
It gave me a sick little feeling. I was surprised and not surprised it was a party. It gave me a hint of how Alexeeva seemed invulnerable and how he was rising in status. He’d have powerful men on his guest list, and after parties like this, they all owed him favors.
Forty-five minutes and a quick shower later, I met Hollie at the apartment to hear details.
Drinks at seven with some casual time, dinner then a movie in a den with a home theater and a sound system that promised to be impressive. No promise Alexeeva would actually be on hand.
Guests probably wouldn’t make it to the end of the movie. They would be slipped away for secret meetings with girls encountered during the casual period.
I’d dealt with terrible people on the streets, but something about how casual it seemed dropped a grim veil over my spirit. Just part of doing business.
“Ryan’s concerned about signing anything that will be binding later.”
She’d settled on the sofa in a black pants suit that seemed appropriate. She held a drink even though it was early.
“Tell him to refuse to ink until after he’s spent time with his new girlfriend. That’s the deal. That’s the bottom line. I don’t know that this is a signature proposition anyway. It’s, and I use the term loosely, a gentleman’s agreement.”
“Is this guy going to be arrested after you get the girl out?”
“I don’t know.”
“There’ll be proof he’s involved in trafficking, won’t there?”
I’d hoped this would come up later.
“He’s slippery, and I’m not law enforcement.”
“We’ll be vulnerable.”
“It’s good that you aren’t the only ones at the party. We’ll make it look like an assault by unknown rivals with Alexeeva as the target. Gives you cover.”
She swallowed a gulp of whiskey, and her eyes looked unconvinced.
“I’ll be honest, Ryan may want to think about relocating after this is over, but then that was going to need to happen anyway. Path he chose and you followed. I’m sure he’s got a few cars and Rolex watches to sell.”
“He’s not going to like that. What about me? I’ve got….”
“Might not be a bad time to travel out of state either.”
“Why should we move ahead with this? We’re probably safer with the Feds.”
“Does Ryan want to be in a lockup trusting prison guards for his safety? All the time. Even if they’re conscientious about keeping a man who swindled retirees safe? The media’s going to find an elderly couple living in a run-down travel trailer with a sick cat that they’re sharing entrees with to spotlight the height of the fund’s evil. This at least gives him a chance to run. A crackdown just gets him sent away longer than Madoff, and believe me in the best case they don’t really lock you up in luxury accommodations.”
“Maybe he could cut a better deal with Alexeeva on his own. There’d be an infusion of cash.”
“Keep him afloat longer? Believe me on this, if there’s a double cross, even if I get offed in the process, the info on the viaticles goes to the right people. Moates goes down and Alexeeva’s still pissed at him, and South America’s suddenly the best option. If he can get there.”
I was telling a lot of truth. Rose had info to disperse if I died.
“Maybe he should just run now.”
“Tell him to try it.“
She didn’t know how big my operation was. Neither did Moates. Best to make my path look like the easiest choice. For all they knew, I had a network of biker gangs and rednecks covering the whole Gulf Coast, and I implied that. Knowing Jasso, it was probably true. I just hadn’t asked to tap into it. Nice company I was keeping.
“Are we a go?”
“I want this over.”
I took her glass and allowed myself a sip.
“So do I.”
Chapter 44
Arch and I scouted the neighborhood in a nondescript car with a real estate sticker on the door and plates that would stand the test if someone got nosey on the other end of the digital security cameras that were everywhere. He’d borrowed it somewhere. Maybe we did have a network I didn’t want to know about beyond his quasi-legal hunting and fishing operation.
We passed my Filipino friend on a sidewalk near the pavilion, pushing his charge’s wheelchair in a slow crawl, a morning constitutional. It wasn’t apparent the old man knew where he was. We might have gleaned additional insights if we’d stopped and talked, but we couldn’t really afford that kind of attention now.
We’d looked over the area on paper, but the cruise gave us a better sense of the landscape. The lots were large near the gated entrance to the Alexeeva compound with not many trees. They offered very little to conceal an approach. The network of canals around the area offered a few more possibilities, but what we were doing was brazen, slipping around local security and the Home Owner’s Association.
“Can you get a boat where you need to?” I asked.
“We’ll do it. We won’t kill any security guards.”
If it were easy, thieves would use the approach all the time. At least the audacity would help make it unexpected. We pinpointed spots that would be critical, spots where roads and canals dead ended, and we marked them on maps with GPS coordinates and talked through everything step by step.
It had all the earmarks of a real cluste
r fuck, especially if Kenny went rogue again. Arch assured me he wouldn’t freelance anymore and that we needed his muscle, but I remained concerned.
“Maybe we should just call in a police raid when we’re sure the girl’s on the premises,” I said.
“They could trigger a siege if they’re not careful,” Arch said. “They won’t be aiming just to slip in and get the girl out like we are. Shooting starts, anything can happen. Or they knock on the door and he tells them to get a warrant, pulls in some favors from the people who are there, and we don’t know where it goes. And then he knows it’s time to send her to the Middle East to be the girlfriend of a sultan.”
“Shit. You make a good devil’s advocate.”
“This is just a messy situation.”
“That it is.”
I was realizing it would have been easier to shoot him, even as I remained thankful I hadn’t had to do that.
On the road, we’d come to a dead end. We pulled over and got out like we were lost and surreptitiously snapped pictures of the surroundings to help keep them familiar when we were fumbling around in the dark.
“We a go?” Arch asked. “I’ve got other things I could be doing if this is going to fizzle.”
I shook my head.
“Keep your calendar clear. We’re a go.”
A sit-down with Moates and Hollie wasn’t the sort of cordial evening you’d want, but we needed it. They didn’t need to know the intricacies of the water work, but we agreed on signals and contingencies and discussed how we’d get Hollie out if there was a problem. Moates we could probably evacuate with Dagney. He wanted the assurance his hide would be safe in moving forward.
I gave it. It calmed him even though it was a lie. I couldn’t guarantee anything.
Chapter 45
The evening arrived and seemed promising at the outset.
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