by Michael Kerr
“Hi Cassidy, how’s it hanging?” Logan said. “Are you having a good day?”
“I’m wondering why you’ve got a death wish, Logan. Sending some old nigger to harass my wife was a big mistake.”
“No, a mistake is an act or judgment that is misguided or wrong. I decided to impress upon you that you and your family are now at great risk of losing everything, including your lives. The guy that passed the message to your wife could just as easily have double-tapped her.”
Cassidy said nothing. He was running out of ideas.
“You could have let it lie,” Logan continued. “But you’re like all psychopaths; you’re a paranoid control freak at heart. All you give a shit about is power and money. You believe that you’re something special, but the truth is that bullets are great levelers. Flesh and blood is all the same to them. You need to realize that you’re just a small fish in a big pond; a loan shark that preys on people in trouble and makes things even worse for them. Because of you I woke up with a gun in my hand and was accused of something I hadn’t done. If it hadn’t been for the waitress and the now late Brad Dicky speaking up for me, I’d be in a cell now, wearing an orange jumpsuit and charged with murder.”
“So get to it, Logan. What do you want from me?”
“Compensation. As for the video, I sent it to the police, so I reckon you’ll be getting a visit in the near future.”
“You killed Nash and shot LaSalle in the feet. He said what he needed to in fear for his life. The video wouldn’t be accepted as evidence. A district attorney wouldn’t consider it germane, and so I’ve got nothing to worry about.”
“You’ve got me and six of my buddies to worry about, Cassidy. Three are ex-cops, and the others are ex-military. Your dumb-ass hired help will be out of their league.”
“And the point your making is?”
“That we meet later tonight and you give me a hundred thousand dollars as reparation for the attempts on our lives.”
“That’s a lot of dough to part with to someone who no longer has anything that’s of any benefit to me.”
“It’s a drop in the ocean to you, and will buy me off and give you a little peace of mind. The alternative is that I’ll destroy you, Cassidy, in every way that you can think of.”
“Where and when do you want to collect the money?”
“I want you to deliver it personally,” Logan said. “Be outside the Glapion family crypt in the St Louis number one cemetery at midnight.”
“I don’t do money drops at midnight.”
“You do tonight, or all bets are off and I make good on my threats.”
“I’ll have men close by, in case you want more from me than money.”
“And I’ll have my team there. We should be able to conclude our business without an O.K. Corral-style shootout.”
Nathan drove over to see Martha Dupré. Told her that he was meeting someone that he believed wished him harm. They had fast, sweaty sex, and then Martha got off the bed and walked over to an antique dresser. She was naked, apart from brightly colored glass beads braided in her hair, and an ornate key hanging around her neck on a strip of rawhide.
Unlocking a drawer, Martha withdrew a small cloth bag that sat easily in the palm of her hand. It was a Gris-gris, a voodoo amulet containing a folded piece of preserved human skin with an ancient verse written on it in human blood. There were also a number of small objects including a diminutive doll made of baked clay, a mummified chicken’s foot and a lock of Martha’s hair.
Returning to the side of the bed, Martha held out the bag and pressed it gently to Nathan’s breast, over his heart, and whispered some incantation, not in English or French, but in some African language.
Nathan waited until Martha had finished and said, “What’s this, girl, some of your voodoo hoodoo?”
“Yes. Keep this with you at all times and it will protect you from evil.”
“You know I don’t believe in that shit.”
“Doesn’t matter whether you do or don’t,” Martha said. “It works. You should keep an open mind to all things. There are ancient powers that can be tapped into and employed to shield a person from harm or convey it to them. Don’t confuse what this is with the junk that stores sell to tourists.”
Nathan left soon after, and was surprised that he felt in some way safer with the small bag tucked in his jacket pocket.
On the way back from Walmart, Logan had stopped at a Home Depot to purchase a couple of items, and then outside St. Louis Cemetery No.1. It was the oldest and most famous bone yard in New Orleans, opened in 1789 to replace the now nonexistent St. Peter Cemetery after the city was rebuilt after being almost destroyed by The Great Fire of 1788.
The cemetery was eight blocks from the Mississippi, on the north side of Basin Street, near the French Quarter and bordering the Iberville housing project.
It seemed somehow distasteful to Logan that the place was a haunt of tourists, who were charged a hefty entry fee to be shown around it by licensed guides. Nothing was sacred. It was like a corpse-filled Disney World, and burials still took place. The actor Nicholas Cage had, allegedly, bought a pyramid-shaped tomb for when his number came up. Only at night did some semblance of peace reign in this city of the dead with its above ground vaults.
Quickly familiarizing himself with the layout of the place from a board on the wall that had a map on it, Logan decided on the best way to enter the cemetery when darkness fell.
Back at the motel they had time to talk, although Ellie Mae found it hard going, due to Logan being laconic at the best of times. He didn’t seem to need conversation.
“What the hell do you want from life, Logan?” Ellie Mae said as she made fresh coffee.
“I don’t want or expect anything from it,” he said. “I take what it gives me and deal with it. Let’s order a pizza, I’m hungry”
“Don’t change the subject. Most people need to have aspiration; an ambition of what they want from life.”
“I’m not most people, Ellie. I don’t need to plan, or aim for anything. I don’t let greed or ambition spoil my day. What other folk want or need is their problem. Too many of them get what they thought they desired, and then realize that it hasn’t made them happy or more comfortable with their hang-ups.”
“So what is important to you?”
“Doing what I think is right and flushing each day behind me like used toilet tissue. It took a few years for me to realize that the past is dead and gone, and I don’t live on memories. Now is enough.”
“You sound like a Zen Buddhist.”
“They’re all mind hippies to me, Ellie. They attempt to understand the meaning of life directly, without being misled by logical thought. And as far as I know they follow a doctrine of peace. Problem with all that is they’ll die not knowing why they were here; and peace is an abstract in a world full of violence. We have to get by the best we can, and sometimes that necessitates doing things we’d rather not have to.”
“Wow! That was almost a speech,” Ellie Mae said as she handed him a cup of coffee. “You’re a dark horse, Logan.”
“What you see is what you get, Ellie. I don’t talk about stuff for the sake of it.
“Surely you’ve got to have a reason to get up each morning.”
“I used to get up, get shaved and showered and go to work as a cop. A lot of what we all do in life is habit. We live by routine, and our lives become a relay of patterns. I have more reason to meet each day now than I’ve ever had before. I’ve got a moment to moment kind of outlook, and it works for me.”
Ellie Mae envied his outlook and lifestyle. Up until this dreadful situation had arisen she had just been on some kind of treadmill, like walking in place until you were out of breath and your legs ached and your body was lathered in perspiration.
She was too hot. Felt rivulets of sweat running down her back. The freakin’ A/C unit was hammering away against the wall but not cooling the room down. And the humidity and her apprehension were causi
ng her to want to eat or have sex. She looked at Logan and decided that moment to moment was the way to go, and that she would rather have him than a Papa John’s pizza delivered to the door.
Logan recognized the look in her eyes as she put her cup down on a night table and approached him. She had a need, and at that moment in time he was it.
“You sure about this?” Logan said as she knelt down in front of him and untied the laces of his Timberlands’.
Ellie Mae said nothing as she pulled off his boots and then reached up to unbuckle his belt.
So be it, Logan thought as he unbuttoned his shirt.
When they were both undressed, Ellie Mae looked at the mature man that had the muscle tone of a thirty-year old. Her eyes were drawn to his genitals, and then up to focus on the deep, white scar that pitted his right shoulder.
“A bullet wound,” Logan said. “I hesitated when I should have pulled a trigger. It was a learning curve, and brought an end to my bowling for the department’s team.”
Ellie Mae needed help to pull her blouse off, which was clinging to her moist skin. She then pushed Logan back on the bed and straddled him, and quickly purged the pent-up need that had been building for days.
They showered together, and at eight-thirty Logan left the room and told her that he would be back at one, maybe two a.m. latest.
There was nothing to say. She took his hand and squeezed it hard. And then he walked over to the truck, got in and drove off.
Ellie Mae locked the door and then lay down on top of the bed and cried. She knew that there was a chance she would never see him again. He had entered her life when she needed him, and was now putting himself in the firing line to resolve the situation.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
BUCK Prowse made the arrangements with the security guard at the gates on N Claiborne Avenue. Paid him a couple of thousand bucks to open up at eleven p.m. and let two vehicles in.
“Is there going to be trouble?” Tyler Doucet said. “I don’t want to lose my job.”
“It’s just a meet, nothing heavy. All you need to do is stay in the office and forget that we were ever here. Can you do that?”
“Sure,” Tyler said. For the amount he’d just tucked away he would have considered killing his mother-in-law. He was on reduced hours’, working four nightshifts a week, and had a second job as a cleaner in a downtown office building, but still struggled to make ends meet. Being honest sucked, but he had two strikes against him for penny-ante stuff, so knew that if he was bust again they would lock him up for a long time; maybe he’d die inside. Being young, slim and having a pretty boy face had done him no favors the first time he’d been sent down for the attempted robbery of a 7-Eleven. He’d been shit-faced on Jack D and just wanted enough money to pay cab fare, and maybe a pack of cigarettes and something to chow on. He hadn’t been armed, but got lifted, found guilty, mainly because of the CCTV footage of him committing the act, and was subsequently sentenced to five years.
The first night up at Angola, the State Pen, which was also referred to as the Farm and Alcatraz of the South, was much more than an eye-opener for Tyler, as his new cellmate graphically illustrated the error of his ways. The fat fuck had been called Dale Johnston, and had been a WWF wrestler for fifteen years before a bad back injury had ended his career. A bungled bank robbery that resulted in him shooting a guard in the leg with a .22 Saturday night special had landed him in the penitentiary for fifteen years, with over six thousand other born losers.
Johnston had ass-fucked Tyler with only a palm full of coughed up phlegm as lubrication to make the rape of the new kid a little easier, for him, not Tyler.
During his stay, which had felt like a lifetime, Tyler estimated that he had taken it up the butt from at least forty of his fellow inmates, and given blowjobs to six times that number. He’d walked out of the gates a free but changed man. Time inside really was hell on earth. It broke you down, and you had to put yourself back together the best way that you could. And he’d been like that nursery rhyme egg, Humpty Dumpty. He’d metaphorically sat on a wall, had a great fall, and it had been up to him to somehow survive the aftermath, cope and become a person that could deal with the hardship that he could not evade.
A month before he was granted parole, Tyler had cut Dale Johnston’s throat with a shank he’d paid another con for with phone cards. He had followed him into the shower block after a day working out on one of the vegetable plots, picking fucking carrots.
Dale thought he was going to fuck Tyler, but got stabbed in the gut four times instead, and then suffered the final deep cut from ear to ear as he fell to his knees.
Prison had hardened Tyler, as well as scared him. He had decided he could stay clear of it, but within a year he was back inside, having reckoned that boosting cars to order was a fair way to make a living. Having put on muscle and having been around the block, his second stay at Angola had been no sweat. He wasn’t some punk kid that could be used and abused any longer. He toughed it through another six years and was out again, married with a rug rat and going straight, biting the bullet and just getting by the best he could. And now he was bending rules again. He had to get by, needed the easy money, and all he would be doing was letting people in after hours, which was no big deal, even if it did seem a weird venue for guys to meet.
Logan walked into The Boat Hook at exactly nine o’clock, and Marcus was at the bar, sitting on the same stool with a glass of beer on a wet napkin in front of his linked and swollen fingers.
“Let’s go and sit at a table and talk,” Logan said. “I don’t want One-eye to hear our conversation. Barkeeps have ears like owls. They act as if they don’t give a shit, but miss nothing.”
Marcus winced as he picked up his glass and stepped down from the stool. The pain killers he took no longer kept the pain at bay. His system had got used to them.
Logan asked for two large bourbons, and One-eye reached up for the Wild Turkey. He didn’t need telling. As a cop, Logan had found that bartenders and waiters made the best witnesses. They took in everything, because what they did for a living was deal with people, day in, day out.
Logan set one glass of the bourbon down next to Marcus’s beer, and with his back to the bar handed him five C-notes, which despite the state of his puffed up fingers he took and transferred to a pocket with surprising dexterity.
“I think that you’re in deep shit, my man,” Marcus said as Logan sat down opposite him. “I suggest you review my offer to watch your six.”
“You ex-military?” Logan said, having not heard that phrase for watching another person’s back in a long time.
“I did a stint, but didn’t rate it. Too many rules and regulations, and I don’t like uniforms or havin’ to get up before midmornin’.”
Logan could see the man’s point of view, but had a different take on it; had learned from the experience, and left the Marine Corps with capabilities that had been a foundation to his subsequent way of living. Having served, he was more able to meet and deal with hardship and adversity in all its many forms.
“You could drive me to the Basin Street side of the Number one Cemetery, and then come back and pick me up at the same spot a few minutes after midnight.”
“No sweat. You got wheels?”
“A truck on a side street nearby.”
“So when is this goin’ to happen?”
“We’ll have another drink and leave. I want to be inside the cemetery before the bad company arrives.”
“They may have the same idea.”
Logan shrugged.
The street was clear. Marcus parked up in shadow on the sidewalk next to the wall. Logan got out, slipped his arms through the straps of his rucksack – so that it was on his back and both his hands were free – and climbed into the bed of the truck, then up onto the cab roof, to transfer across to the top of the high, wide wall and sit astride it, before turning and lowering himself down the other side, dropping to land on short grass with his legs bending to absor
b the shock of impact. He waited, crouched down and motionless, listening to the night and studying the lay of the land. There was no movement or sound, other than that of vehicles on the nearby overpass, and the muffled noise of the blues merging and drifting into the cemetery from clubs and bars.
Removing the rucksack from his back, Logan withdrew the silenced Glock from it, to push under the belt of his pants before slowly and warily walking along the rear of a row of vaults, to enter the narrow space between two of them and make preparations for Cassidy and his men’s arrival.
Buck Prowse flashed the high beams of the Explorer as he drew up to the gates, and Tyler trotted out from the office to open them as fingers of bright light poked through the railings. The SUV was followed in by a Ford Taurus driven by Luther Abner, and with him in the car were two other members of Nathan’s crew. The Explorer veered to the left; the Taurus to the right, for them both to be parked out of sight from the gates, which were quickly closed and locked behind them.
Tyler went back into the office. He planned on locking the door and watching what was about to take place on the live feed to the bank of monitors that covered the cemetery. CCTV saved him from having to do regular foot patrols.
Buck followed Tyler in, told him to sit down, and then shot him in the forehead with a silenced nine-millimeter Ruger, to watch him flip back and over the swivel chair and come to rest folded up on the faded vinyl-covered floor with his ass stuck up in the air. He then donned a pair of latex gloves and relieved the dead man of the gate key and the wallet that still held the bills he had paid Tyler earlier. Next, he went over to the DVR –Digital Video Recorder – to pull the plug out of the wall socket. There would be no recording of what would shortly take place.
Buck stayed next to the SUV while Luther and the Clancy brothers – Clifton and Tom – drew their guns and began to search the cemetery. Their orders were to take Logan alive, because Nathan wanted to talk to him, find out where Ellie Mae Sawyer was, and then take pleasure in personally shooting the son of a bitch who was causing him so much trouble.