Accused

by Michael Kerr

  “We’ll be fine. Just be careful, do what needs to be done and get back as quick as you can.”

  Logan watched as Mike drove out of the lot and headed back the way he had come. When the tail lights were lost around a curve, he entered the roadhouse, which was called The General’s Quarters and had a large confederate flag flapping above the main entrance, and at least two dozen Harleys’ lined up along the frontage.

  Striking up a conversation with a bearded, leather-clad biker by the name of Chino, Logan made it known that he would appreciate a ride into town, if anyone was going that way.

  “We’re stayin’ under canvas in the meadow behind this place,” Chino said. “By the time we finish up drinkin’ we’ll be stinkin’, and won’t be able to ride anywhere tonight.”

  “I’m heading west out of the city,” a middle-aged guy within earshot said to Logan as he slipped down off a stool and put a twenty on the bar top to pay his tab.

  “I’d be obliged to be dropped off as near the center as your going,” Logan said.

  Forty-five minutes later Logan was sitting in a booth of a coffee shop in the French Quarter. The guy that had given him a ride – Bill Newman – had just wanted someone to offload on; telling Logan that his wife had decided she was gay and left him to go and live in Nashville with a buxom dyke sporting a military-style high and tight haircut and two full sleeves of ink. Logan had nodded and grunted a lot as he half listened to the outpouring of the traveling salesman from Lafayette, who was heading home to an empty house full of more bad than good memories.

  After three cups of coffee, Logan took Nash’s cell from his jacket pocket and phoned Detective Pleshette.

  “It’s Logan,” he said when Lucy took the call. “Any progress?”

  “Not without you and Ellie Mae,” Lucy said. “We had to cut LaSalle and Nash loose. Where are you?”

  “Here and there, Detective. I’ll keep in touch,” Logan said and switched off the phone. He then made another call, to speed-dial Clayton LaSalle’s number.

  “What do you want, Dwayne?” Clayton said.

  “Didn’t your buddy tell you that I took his cell, LaSalle?”

  Clayton said nothing, but stayed on the phone. He knew that it was Logan speaking to him.

  “I’ve called to warn you that you’re on the clock. You are very unsafe. You could quite easily suffer a fatal accident in the very near future, or go down to the parking garage and be blown away as you climb in your Buick, if the police have let you collect it from the pound. Nash told me a lot about you. You’re both sitting ducks in my sights now.”

  “Is there a point to these threats?” Clayton said.

  “Yes. If you don’t leave town, I’ll take it to mean that you still intend to finish what you couldn’t at the motel. You have till noon tomorrow to quit New Orleans until this is resolved.”

  “Resolved?”

  “Yeah. I’ve got the feeling that your boss is too stupid to appreciate what lengths I’m prepared to go to. He probably thinks he has enough guys and guns to protect him, but he hasn’t.”

  “You’re one man, Logan. I think it would be wiser if you left town and didn’t come back, ever. Forget what you’ve seen and what you know. Just keep your mouth shut and find some hole to crawl in, preferably a thousand miles away from The Big Easy. If you don’t, you’ll wind up a statistic.”

  “How come I guessed that you’d want to do this the hard way, LaSalle? Remember that I gave you fair warning,” Logan said before ending the call.

  There was no alternative but to take action that he would rather not have to. Lowlifes’ always took more notice of deeds than words. They lived and preyed on soft targets that they could easily threaten or hurt to get what they wanted, and were usually too arrogant to believe that they could become the hunted.

  Cassidy and LaSalle didn’t realize yet that Logan could be as brutal as they were, but soon would.

  Nathan’s cell rang at six a.m. He had been up long enough to shower and make coffee, and was now wearing a silk dressing gown and standing at the open French doors listening to birdsong and sipping strong Colombian blend as he surveyed the extensive backyard, smelled the flowers and planned his day.

  Accepting the call, Nathan said, “Yes?”

  “I got your voice mail,” Ed Jansen said. “I’ll be in New Orleans by lunchtime. I suggest that we meet at the hotel I stayed at the last time we did business, say one p.m. in the bar, to discuss what you outlined. I’ll be registered as Steve Harrison.”

  “See you there,” Nathan said and ended the call. He felt immediately more at ease. Jansen was expensive, but got results. It was rumored that he had fulfilled at least a hundred hits for contractors, and he had on one occasion taken out a prospective mayor of New Orleans for Nathan and made it look like an accidental death. William G. Clifford had made it known that if voted into office he would crack down on illegal gambling and loan sharking. And he had Nathan in his sights, putting him in a position that called for severe measures to keep the status quo.

  William had left City Hall on Perdido Street at seven p.m. on a cold December evening to drive out to his house on Lake Willow Drive, and Ed had followed him, to pull in behind him on the driveway at the side of the property and quickly exit his rental car and open the passenger door of Clifford’s sedan and stick the muzzle of his gun in the guy’s ribs as he climbed in.

  “Is there anyone in the house, Mr. Clifford?” Ed had asked as his mark just sat openmouthed and trembling.

  “No, I live alone,” William said. “Are you here to rob me?”

  “Just to talk,” Ed said. “You’re pissing off a lot of people with the policies that you intend to implement if you become mayor. Drive all the way down to the lake and stop next to it. Do it now.”

  William was no hero. He did not have the courage to attempt to disarm the man. And wearing a seat belt would have made any retaliation futile. Being a heavy drinker and eating far too much of the wrong kind of food had made him fat, weak and unfit, but he thought he would be able to talk his way out of the situation he was in.

  The ground sloped down to a dock that overhung the edge of Lake Willow.

  “Drive to the end of the dock, then stop and leave the engine running, it’s cold tonight,” Ed said when William brought the car to a halt twenty feet away from the water.

  William obeyed, hoping that the old dock would not collapse. It creaked but held as he brought the vehicle to a stop and slipped the selector into Park.

  “Do you have any booze in the car?” Ed said.

  “Just a hip flask with some Scotch in it,” William said.

  “So take it out nice and easy and have a drink.”

  William fumbled in his pocket for the silver, personalized flask and held it in a pudgy, shaking hand. Unscrewed the top and took a much needed swig.

  “All of it,” Ed said.

  William didn’t need any encouragement to drain the flask. He had drank quite a lot at lunchtime in a bar near City Hall, but the lingering effects had deserted him, leaving him feeling stone cold sober when the man had got in his car and thrust the gun in his side.

  There was no further talking. Ed thumbed the rocker switch to open the window next to him, and then slipped the pistol back into a pocket, grasped a handful of William’s overlong gray hair and slammed his head down on to the steering wheel with enough force to split his forehead open and knock him senseless.

  Ed didn’t hurry, just got out, walked round to the driver’s side, opened the door and reached across the unconscious man to push the selector into Drive, before stepping back, leaving the door open.

  The car crept forward, and then upended and plunged into the lake hood first, due to the weight of the engine, to bob back up like a cork before the freezing water gushed in through the door and open window.

  The car quickly began to sink. The coldness of the water caused William to regain his senses, and he realized that he was in danger of drowning as the water level rose up hi
s body to his neck and then his mouth. He scrabbled to find the buckle to release the seat belt, but his hand was freezing and he was seized by panic.

  Gagging on water, William stretched his chin up as far as he could, but to no avail. Thrashing, holding his breath and knowing that he was going to die triggered a catastrophic cardiac infarction, and the sensation of a nail being driven through his chest was the last sensation that he felt before his heart ceased to beat and the car became submerged.

  Ed watched as the vehicle tilted to the left, then to the right, to finally straighten and sink like a ship at sea. Only a large ring of bubbles briefly marked the spot where it had been.

  Waiting for another thirty seconds until the lake’s surface was still again, Ed turned and jogged back to the rental car, to reverse out of the driveway unhurriedly and head back into the city.

  Nathan remembered that the death of the would-be mayor had been considered accidental, due to the fact that he had been drinking. It was assumed, incorrectly, that he had for some reason driven down to the lake’s edge and stamped on the brake, too late, causing him to jerk forward and hit his head on the steering wheel and subsequently suffer a fatal heart attack as he began to drown.

  Professional hitmen did not always double tap their victims in the head, as the majority of movies would have audiences believe. There were far more subtle ways to kill a person, to make their deaths appear to be accidental or by their own hand. Ed Jansen took pride in his work. He preferred low-profile methods, not messy deaths that attracted too much attention. Not that he was disinclined to inflict pain and employ any means to curtail life if that was requested or proved necessary. But he was not basically a sadistic, bloodthirsty killer. It was just a very profitable way to earn a very good living.

  Ed had been born and raised on a farm in Austin, Texas, to grow up hunting, fishing and enjoying country music, especially that of Willie Nelson, George Jones and Merle Haggard. His problem, to others, was that he lacked empathy for animals and humans alike, which led to him being alienated by most people. At sixteen years old he had committed his first murder, cutting a man’s throat in an alley as his attempt to mug him met resistance. He had learned not to be impetuous, and by his early twenties had graduated to being part of a crew that worked for Axel Sanger, the most powerful crime boss in Dallas during the late eighties and early nineties, until he was gunned down as he left a high-class brothel on N. Houston Street, not far from Dealey Plaza, where John F. Kennedy had also met his death by way of bullets over thirty years previously.

  Axel had stolen a quote of Al Capone’s: ‘Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class, and added to it, and organized crime is the legitimate racket of the common man with aspiration and no regard for the law’.

  Ed flew from Houston, where he had now lived for several years, to take a cab from Louis Armstrong International Airport the eleven miles to downtown New Orleans. He checked in at the Ritz-Carlton with forged ID in the name of Steve Harrison, to be shown to his suite, take a shower, don fresh clothes and anticipate his meet with Nathan Cassidy.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LOGAN enjoyed a steak meal in an all-night diner in the French Quarter, and then took a cab to the apartment building in Terrytown where Clayton LaSalle lived. He decided that LaSalle would be able to give him more insight to Cassidy than Nash had been able to. Dwayne Nash was more foot soldier than officer. There would be a lot of information he was not privy to. It was always better to enjoin battle with as much up to date Intel as possible.

  Ambling along the street, Logan passed the opening to the underground parking garage without slowing. He could have easily walked down the ramp and circumnavigated the barrier, but was sure that there would be CCTV in what he could see was a well-lit area. Not knowing what would go down, he didn’t want to be caught on tape or disc. And there was the possibility that there was a security guard in an office, watching monitors.

  The main entrance door to the building had a keypad panel, but no names of the residents. You had to know the four-digit code to buzz up to an apartment and state your business. They took security seriously. And he supposed that the door to LaSalle’s apartment would not be the kind that he could kick open. It was probably steel-faced with locks that could not be picked.

  Stopping in a recessed doorway half way along the street, Logan watched as a cab went by, slowed down and stopped next to the curb outside the apartment building. Fate must exist, though Logan was not a believer in it. He was still of the mind that most of what happened, good or bad, was totally random and part of the general chaos that took place every second. No one was safe from random accidents, violence or serious disease. You had to just get on with getting on until the magical mystery tour of life came to an end and the ride was over.

  Logan just thought it was fortuitous when Dwayne Nash climbed out of the vehicle and walked across the sidewalk. His right arm was in a sling and his nose was taped up.

  Moving fast and staying in shadow up against the wall, Logan reached the plate-glass door as the lock clicked open and Nash stepped inside the lobby.

  Nash didn’t know what had hit him. He felt a blow to the middle of his back and was sent stutter-stepping forward, to crash into one of the two elevator doors, rebounding off it to fall on his ass.

  Logan pressed the call button and one of the doors slid back. He grasped Nash by the collar and dragged him inside the car and said, “Which floor is your scar-faced bud on?”

  Nash couldn’t believe that Logan was standing over him. He didn’t want anything else broken by the big man: “Sixth,” he said.

  “Apartment?”

  “Six oh three.”

  Logan kept his face angled down, hoping that he had not been caught on camera, and pressed the glowing numeral 6, and as the elevator smoothly rose up through the belly of the building he frisked Nash. He was unarmed. Logan then took the silenced gun – which he had relieved Nash of at the motel – from his rucksack and checked that there was a round in the chamber, ready to go.

  “When we get to his door, you act as normal as your pea-sized brain will allow and make sure he opens it. If he doesn’t I’ll blow your dick off. Understand?”

  Nash nodded. He wished that he’d stayed home. Clayton had phoned him and told him that Logan had been in touch and that the big guy was on some fuckin’ half-assed crusade to deal with them and the boss: said that they should be together at his place, just in case Logan was serious. And now he was back in Logan’s clutches and knew that he could very easily end up with a lot more than the broken wrist and nose that were still hurting like hell.

  “Walk on,” Logan said as though he was talking to a dog as they stepped out of the elevator on to thick and plush carpeting in a wide and brightly lit corridor.

  Logan stood at the side of the door, well back, while Dwayne faced it front and center and thumbed the bell push.

  Glass of Scotch in hand, Clayton went to the door and looked through the wide-angle peephole. Saw the sorry sight of Dwayne standing there with two black eyes that had been caused by the breaking of his nose.

  Clayton opened the door and said: “So come in and―”

  Logan swung the gun sideways, hard and fast, for the silencer to connect with the back of Nash’s skull and send him flying into LaSalle, who staggered back and lost his grip on the glass that he was holding, for the golden spirit to spray into the air as the glass hit the carpet, rolled into the leg of a solid oak occasional table and shattered.

  Kicking the door shut behind him, Logan placed his rucksack next to it as he kept the pistol aimed rock steady at LaSalle’s chest.

  “Now what?” Clayton said as he regained some composure. “Are you here to kill me?”

  Logan said nothing, just noted that Nash was out of it, and lowered the angle of the gun and shot LaSalle in the left foot.

  Clayton howled and fell to his knees. The pain brought tears to his eyes. Unbeknown to him his foot contained twenty-six bones, thirty-three
joints, and nineteen muscles and tendons. The bullet that went through the top of his foot and blasted half the sole of it away had caused enough damage to all but ensure that he would at best limp for the rest of his life, however long that might prove to be.

  “I don’t need to kill you LaSalle, unless you give me good reason to, and then I will.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “To find out more about your boss, Cassidy.”

  “Didn’t you get what you need from Dwayne?”

  Logan pulled up a highly carved wooden chair from where it had stood next to the wall of the foyer, sat down on it and said, “You seem to be the one that has a closer relationship with Cassidy. I want to know what makes him tick and what the best way would be to convince him that going after the waitress and me would not be in his best interest.”

  “You and the waitress could probably put Dwayne and me on death row, and Mr. Cassidy knows that we’d do any deal put on the table to save our skins, if need be.”

  “So whether you know it or not, you’re both at risk from him as well.”

  “Not if you and the broad are dealt with.”

  “That’s not going to happen. You’re going to tell me everything that you know about him, his family, friends, associates, and what connection he has with anyone in law enforcement who watches his back and gives him the heads up.”

  “And if I refuse?” Clayton said through clenched teeth as blood seeped out of his shoe.

  “I shoot you in the other foot. And then if you still want to hold out I’ll cut off both of your ears. If necessary you get to die tonight, slowly. It’ll be your call.”

  Clayton looked into Logan’s eyes and saw a reflection of his own capacity to inflict pain. He knew that Logan was not issuing idle threats.

  “Okay,” Clayton said. “But how do I know that you won’t kill me anyway?”

  “You don’t. You have to just hope that I let you live, but be aware that if you give me reason to put a bullet in your head, I’ll do it without hesitation. You’re the type of creep that doesn’t give jack shit for anyone else. You’re death would make a lot of law-abiding people safer.”