‘Brother Louis,’ he said, rising. Louis took out his wallet and handed over three hundred-dollar bills. The man tucked the money into the thigh pocket of his combats, removed a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses from the same pocket and put them on before strolling out into the sunlight.
Louis motioned to the container. ‘If you gentlemen would like to take that up to the room,’ he said. Angel and I took an end each and followed him up to the suite. The case was heavy and something inside rattled as we walked.
‘Those UPS couriers are sure getting bigger,’ I said, as I waited for him to open the door.
‘It’s a specialised service,’ said Louis. ‘There are some things the airlines just wouldn’t understand.’
When he had closed and locked the door behind us, he took a set of keys from the pocket of his suit and opened the case.
It was separated into three layers, which opened up like those in a tool kit. On the first layer were the constituent parts of a Mauser SP66, a three-round heavy-barrelled sniper rifle with a combined muzzle brake and flash hider. The parts were packed in a removable case. Beside it, a SIG P226 pistol and a belt holster lay in a fitted compartment.
In the second compartment sat two Calico M-960A mini-subs, made in the good old US of A, each hand-held sub fitted with a short barrel which extended less than an inch and a half beyond the fore-end. With the stock retracted, each gun measured a little over two feet in length and, empty, weighed just under five pounds. They were exceptionally lethal little guns, with a rate of fire of seven hundred and fifty rounds per minute. The third compartment contained an array of ammunition, including four one-hundred-round magazines of 9mm Parabellum for the subs.
‘Christmas present?’ I asked.
‘Yup,’ said Louis, loading a fifteen-round magazine into the butt of the SIG. ‘I’m hoping to get a rail gun for my birthday.’
He handed Angel the case containing the Mauser, slipped on the belt holster and inserted the SIG. He then relocked the case and went into the bathroom. As we watched, he removed the panelling from beneath the sink with a screwdriver and shoved the case into the gap before replacing the panel. When he was satisfied that it was back in place, we left.
‘You think Joe Bones will be pleased to see a bunch of strangers show up on his doorstep?’ asked Angel, as we walked to my rental.
‘We ain’t strangers,’ said Louis. ‘We’re just friends he ain’t met yet.’
Joe Bones owned three properties in Louisiana, including a weekend house at Cypremort Point where his presence must have made the more respectable weekenders, with their expensive holiday houses bearing jokey names like Eaux-Asis and End of the Trail, distinctly uneasy.
His city residence lay across from Audubon Park, almost opposite the bus stop for the shuttle bus that took tourists to the New Orleans Zoo. I had taken a trip on the St Charles streetcar to inspect the house, a brilliantly white confection adorned with black wrought-iron balconies and a cupola topped with a gold weather-vane. Finding Joe Bones inside a place like that was like finding a cockroach in a wedding cake. In the carefully maintained garden, a flower I couldn’t identify bloomed lushly. Its scent was sickly and heavy, its flower so large and red that it seemed more rotten than blooming, as if the flowers themselves would suddenly burst and send thick fluid down the branches of the plant, poisoning the aphids.
Joe Bones had deserted the house for the summer in favour of a restored plantation house out in West Feliciana Parish, over one hundred miles north of New Orleans. As impending hostilities with the Fontenots grew more and more likely, the decision to remain in West Feliciana allowed him to defend the country house with more force than he could in the city.
It was a white, eight-columned mansion set on about forty acres, bordered at two sides by an expanse of river flowing south towards the Mississippi. Four large windows looked out on to a wide gallery and the house was topped by two dormer windows set into its roof. An avenue of oaks led from a black iron gate through grounds set with camellias and azaleas until the trees stopped before a wide expanse of lawn. On the lawn, a small group of people stood around a barbecue or lounged on iron lawn furniture.
I spotted three security cameras within ten feet of the gate when we drew up, side-on. We had dropped Angel about half a mile back after cruising by the house once already, and I knew he was already making for the stand of cypress that stood opposite the gate. In the event of anything going down with Joe Bones, I decided that I had a better chance of dealing with it with Louis rather than Angel by my side.
A fourth camera overlooked the gate itself. There was no intercom and the gate remained resolutely closed, even when Louis and I leaned against the car and waved.
After two or three minutes a converted golf cart came from behind the house and hummed down the oak-lined avenue towards us. Three men in chinos and sports shirts stepped from it. They made no attempt to hide their Steyr machine pistols.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘We’re here to see Joe Bones.’
‘There ain’t no Joe Bones here,’ said one of the men. He was tanned and short, no more than five-six. His hair was braided tightly against his scalp, giving him a reptilian appearance.
‘How about Mr Joseph Bonnano, is he there?’
‘What are you, cops?’
‘We’re concerned citizens. We were hoping Mr Bones would make a donation to the David Fontenot funeral fund.’
‘He already gave,’ said the guy by the golf cart, a fatter version of the lizard man. His colleagues at the gate laughed fit to burst a gut.
I moved closer to the gate. Lizard Man’s gun came up quickly.
‘Tell Joe Bones that Charlie Parker is here, that I was in the Aguillard house on Sunday night and that I’m looking for Remarr. You think Funny Man back there can remember all that?’
He stepped back from the gate and, without taking his eyes off us, relayed what I had said to the guy by the golf cart. He took a walkie-talkie from the rear seat, spoke into it for a moment and then nodded at Lizard Man. ‘He says let ’em through, Ricky.’
‘Okay,’ said Ricky, taking a remote signaller from his pocket, ‘step back from the gate, turn around and put your hands against the car. You packing, then tell me now. I find anything you haven’t told me about, I put a bullet in your head and feed you to the ’gators.’
We owned up to a Smith & Wesson and a SIG between us. Louis threw in an ankle knife for good measure. We left the car at the gate and walked behind the golf cart towards the house. One man sat in the back with his pistol pointing at us while Ricky walked behind us.
As we neared the lawn I could smell shrimp and chicken cooking on the barbecue. An iron table held an assortment of spirits and glasses. Abita and Heineken lay in a steel cooler packed with ice.
From the side of the house came a low growl, deep with viciousness and menace. At the end of a strong chain, which was anchored to a bolt set in concrete, was a huge animal. It had the thick coat of a wolf, flecked with the colouring of an Alsatian. Its eyes were bright and intelligent, which rendered its obvious savagery all the more threatening. It looked like it weighed at least one hundred and eighty pounds. Each time it tugged at its chain, it threatened to wrench the bolt from the ground.
I noticed that it seemed to be directing most of its attention at Louis. Its eyes focused on him intently and at one point it raised itself up on its hind legs in its efforts to strike at him. Louis looked at it with the detached interest of a scientist finding a curious new type of bacteria growing in his Petri dish.
Joe Bones speared a piece of spiced chicken with a fork and placed it on a china plate. He was only slightly taller than Ricky, with long dark hair swept back from his forehead. His nose had been broken at least once and a small scar twisted his upper lip on the left side. His white shirt was open to the waist and hung over a pair of Lycra running shorts. His stomach was hard and muscular, his chest and arms slightly overdeveloped for a man of his height. He looked mean and intelligent, like the animal o
n the chain, which probably explained how he had lasted for ten years at the top of the heap in New Orleans.
He placed some tomatoes, lettuce and cold rice mixed with peppers beside the chicken and handed the plate to a woman seated near by. She was older than Joe, I guessed, probably in her early or mid-forties. There was no darkness at her blonde roots and she wore little or no makeup, although her eyes were obscured by a pair of Wayfarers. She wore a short-sleeved silk robe over a white blouse and white shorts. Like Joe Bones, she was barefoot. To one side of them stood two more men in shirts and chinos, each armed with a machine pistol. I counted two more on the balcony and one sitting beside the main door to the house.
‘You want something to eat?’ asked Joe Bones. His voice was low, with only a faint trace of Louisiana in it. He looked at me until I responded.
‘No, thanks,’ I said. I noticed that he didn’t offer any to Louis. I think Louis noticed, too.
Joe Bones helped himself to some shrimp and salad, then motioned to the two guards to help themselves to what was left. They took turns to do so, each eating a breast of chicken with his fingers.
‘Those Aguillard murders. A terrible thing,’ said Joe Bones. He waved me towards the only empty seat left after he sat down. I exchanged a look with Louis, shrugged and sat.
‘Excuse me for presuming on an intimacy with you,’ he continued, ‘but I hear that the same man may have been responsible for the deaths of your family.’ He smiled almost sympathetically. ‘A terrible thing,’ he repeated. ‘A terrible thing.’
I held his gaze. ‘You’re well informed about my past.’
‘When someone new comes to town and starts finding bodies in trees, I like to make it my business to find out about them. They might be good company.’ He picked a piece of shrimp from his plate and examined it briefly before starting to eat.
‘I understand you had an interest in purchasing the Aguillards’ land,’ I said.
Joe Bones sucked at a shrimp and placed the tail carefully to one side of his plate before responding. ‘I have a lot of interests, and that wasn’t Aguillard land. Just because some senile fuck decides to make up for a bad life by slipping land to the niggers doesn’t make it nigger land.’ He spat the word ‘nigger’ each time. His shell of courtesy had proved remarkably fragile and he seemed intent upon deliberately provoking Louis. It was an unwise course of action, even with guns around him.
‘It seems that one of your men, Tony Remarr, may have been in the house the night that the Aguillards died. We’d be interested in talking to him.’
‘Tony Remarr is no longer part of my operation,’ said Joe Bones, returning to his formal mode of speech after the burst of profanity. ‘We agreed a mutual parting of the ways and I haven’t seen him in weeks. I had no idea he was in the Aguillard house until the police told me.’
He smiled at me. I smiled back.
‘Did Remarr have anything to do with David Fontenot’s death?’
Joe Bones’s jaw tensed but he kept smiling. ‘I have no idea. I heard about David Fontenot on the news this morning.’
‘Another terrible thing?’ I suggested.
‘The loss of a young life is always terrible,’ he responded. ‘Look, I’m sorry about your wife and kid, I truly am, but I can’t help you. And, frankly, now you’re getting rude, so I’d like you to take your nigger and get the fuck off my property.’
The muscles in Louis’s neck rippled, the only sign he gave that he had heard Joe Bones. Joe Bones leered at him, picked up a piece of chicken and tossed it towards the beast on the chain. It ignored the titbit until his owner snapped his fingers, when it fell on the chicken and devoured it in a single bite.
‘You know what that is?’ asked Joe Bones. He spoke to me, but his body language was directed at Louis. It expressed utter contempt. When I didn’t respond, he continued.
‘It’s called a boerbul. A man named Peter Geertschen, a German, developed it for the army and anti-riot squads in South Africa by crossing a Russian wolf with an Alsatian. It’s a white man’s watchdog. It sniffs out niggers.’ He turned his gaze on Louis and smiled.
‘Careful,’ I said. ‘He might get confused and turn on you.’ Joe Bones jerked in his chair as if he had been hit by a jolt of electricity. His eyes narrowed and searched my face for any indication that I was aware of a double meaning in what I had said. I stared right back at him.
‘You better leave now,’ said Joe Bones, with quiet, obvious menace. I shrugged and stood up, Louis moving close to me as I did so. We exchanged a look.
‘Man got us on the run,’ said Louis.
‘Maybe, but if we leave like this he won’t respect us.’
‘Without respect, a man got nothing,’ agreed Louis.
He picked a plate from the stack on the table and held it above his head. It exploded in a shower of china fragments as the .300 Winchester cartridge impacted and buried itself in the wood of the house behind. The woman in the chair dived to the grass, the two goons moved to cover Joe Bones and three men appeared running from the side of the house as the shot echoed in the air.
Ricky, the Lizard Man, was the first to reach us. He raised the pistol and his finger tightened on the trigger, but Joe Bones struck out at his gun arm, pushing it upwards.
‘No! You dumb fuck, you want to get me killed?’ He scanned the treeline beyond his property, then turned back to me. ‘You come in here, you shoot at me, you scare my woman. The fuck do you think you’re dealing with here?’
‘You said the N-word,’ said Louis quietly.
‘He’s right,’ I agreed. ‘You did say it.’
‘I hear you got friends in New Orleans,’ said Joe Bones, his voice threatening. ‘I got enough troubles without the feds crawling on me, but I see you or your . . .’ He paused, swallowing the word. ‘. . . friend anywhere near me again and I’ll take my chances, you hear?’
‘I hear you,’ I said. ‘I’m going to find Remarr, Joe. If it turns out that you’ve been holding out on us and this man gets away because of it, I’ll come back.’
‘You make us come back, Joe, and we gonna have to hurt your puppy,’ said Louis, almost sorrowfully.
‘You come back and I’ll stake you out on the grass and let him feed on you,’ snarled Joe Bones.
We backed away towards the oak-lined avenue, watching Joe Bones and his men carefully. The woman moved beside him to comfort him, her white clothes stained with grass. She kneaded gently at his trapezius with her carefully manicured hands, but he pushed her away with a hard shove to the chest. There was spittle on his chin.
Behind us, I heard the gate open as we retreated beneath the oaks.
‘I didn’t know Angel was such a good shot,’ I said, as we reached the car. ‘You been giving him lessons?’
‘Uh-huh,’ said Louis. He sounded genuinely shocked.
‘Could he have hit Joe Bones?’
‘Uh-uh. I’m surprised he didn’t hit me.’
Behind us, I heard the door open as Angel slid into the back seat, the Mauser already back in its case.
‘So, we gonna start hangin’ out with Joe Bones, maybe shoot some pool, whistle at girls?’
‘When did you ever whistle at girls?’ asked Louis, bemused, as we pulled away from the gate and headed towards St Francisville.
‘It’s a guy thing,’ said Angel. ‘I can do guy things.’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It was late afternoon when we got back to the Flaisance, where there was a message waiting from Morphy. I called him at the sheriff’s department and got passed on to a cellphone number.
‘Where you been?’ he asked.
‘Visiting Joe Bones.’
‘Shit, why’d you do a thing like that?’
‘Making trouble, I guess.’
‘I warned you, man. Don’t be screwing with Joe Bones. You go alone?’
‘I brought a friend. Joe didn’t like him.’
‘What’d your friend do?’
‘He got born to black parents
.’
Morphy laughed. ‘I guess Joe is kind of sensitive about his heritage, but it’s good to remind him of it now and then.’
‘He threatened to feed my friend to his dog.’
‘Yeah,’ said Morphy, ‘Joe sure does love that dog.’
‘You got something?’
‘Maybe. You like seafood?’
‘No.’
‘Good, then we’ll head out to Bucktown. Great seafood there, best shrimp around. I’ll pick you up in two hours.’
‘Any other reason for seeing Bucktown other than seafood?’
‘Remarr. One of his exes has a pad there. Might be worth a visit.’
Rachel wasn’t in her room when I knocked. The desk clerk said she had gone out to the university campus earlier in the day. He also had a pile of faxes for her, he said. He looked queasily at the curled papers. I was tempted to flick through them but instead I went back to my room, showered and changed, and left a message for Rachel telling her that I’d call her later. I told Angel and Louis where I was going and asked them to watch out for her return. Louis was practising yoga exercises on the bedroom floor. Angel was watching Welcome Back Kotter.
Morphy was on time and we headed north on Canal Boulevard and then west on to Lakeshore Drive. The waters of Lake Pontchartrain sparkled in the early-evening light and, ahead of us, I could see the lights of cars heading towards Mandeville and Covington on the giant Lake Pontchartrain causeway. We passed the marina at West End Park and Morphy pointed out the tree-lined boulevard of the Southern Yacht Club. He had only once set foot in the club, the second oldest in the country, he said, when he was called to arrest a man who had set his business partner’s yacht on fire after he learned that his partner was sleeping with his wife. The burning yacht had illuminated the bar where the firebug sat, nursing a glass of Chivas and waiting patiently for the police to arrest him.
Bucktown was pretty in a quaint sort of way, as long as you liked the smell of fish. I kept the window up to try to limit the damage but Morphy had his rolled right down and was taking deep, sinful breaths. All in all, Bucktown seemed an unlikely place for a man like Remarr to hole up, but that in itself was probably reason enough for him to choose it.
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