“I don’t know as much as you probably hope. I think it may be related to weapons. Or drugs. Maybe both. I imagine something like Iran Contra. In any event, it goes back decades. It’s quasi-governmental, or used to be.” She issued forth an angry laugh. “The good ol’ military-industrial complex. Over the years I would see people come and go, but the meetings became increasingly secretive. I could point out a few of the members, but it wouldn’t get you far. Plausible deniability is the name of the game.”
“I saw your husband and another guy discussing a project at the lake.” Marisol described the dapper man from the party.
“I think I know who you’re talking about. He’s an investment banker in New York, but he comes from an old New England family that’s been tied in with the Duchamps for generations.”
Geoff said, “What about a tall thin Middle Eastern man with a British accent? Calls himself the Prince?”
“Sure. Prince Bashir-something-or-another. The twelfth-or-so son of an Arab sheik who struck deals with Robert’s father after the war for control of some of the richest oil fields on Earth. Because, you know, if you’re a Duchamp, you can never have enough money.” She had pronounced the name the French way rather than the Americanized DOO-champ customary in that family, and must have noticed Geoff’s quizzical look. “I used to say it that way to tease him—he hated it. Especially after the reactionary wing of his constituency became convinced the French were our blood enemy.
“Anyway my uncle, my father’s no-account brother, was involved from the beginning, I know that. Crooked as the day is long. Died twenty years ago. I think his widow Esther carried on for a while, but Lord she’s ninety now if she’s a day. I don’t think Robert’s talked to her in years. I sure haven’t.” Kathleen flipped her hair and her lip twitched, as if her current indignation could dispel the decades she spent complicit in such greed with only that minor convulsion. “This isn’t just about me saving myself, I hope you realize. After he left office, after those bastards in the media destroyed him with that trumped up fake charity scandal, Robert swore to me he would give up his association with the Group, the refinery, all that East Texas unpleasantness. We bought our house in the city where we could take in a play, go out to dinner. I wanted us to become patrons of the arts.” She looked back and forth from Geoff to Marisol, as if pleading for understanding from the two of them. Defensive, for the first time that morning. “That swamp down there was never our home, really. It was just politically expedient to be based there.”
“But he didn’t give up those associations. And the books prove that?”
“The books prove that Robert continues to transfer large amounts of money among various shady characters, all connected somehow to that refinery. You could use the information in those books to crack open his finances, his overseas accounts that fund the work of the Group. But the most damning evidence in those books links my husband to that degenerate piece of white trash Jimmy Lee Monroe. Wire transfers to Monroe immediately before and after that lynching down there, what’s-her-name …”
Geoff closed his eyes. “Dalia Bordelon.”
“Right.” She stubbed out her cigarette and rose, gathering her purse. “Now I’ve given you everything I know. Do what you have to with it. I’ll be talking to my lawyer. I could testify to my husband’s link to Monroe. I could authenticate the books. That’s all I can do. But your problem is Hargrave. He’s been one of Robert’s cronies for years. You’ll never get him to go after my husband.”
•
Stretching out on the couch, gazing at the ceiling through the lingering haze of Kathleen’s cigarette smoke, Geoff said, “Well, it’s not a lot, but it sounds like enough to take to a grand jury. They could dig into the finances, freeze assets. Maybe come up with an indictment.”
Marisol said, “But the woman just said that the DA’s in bed with Duchamp. He’ll never convene a grand jury.”
Geoff rubbed his chin, feeling her watching him. He thought he’d done well on Kathleen Duchamp, maybe scored some savvyness points with his worldly detective.
“Maybe we need to throw some sunlight on this thing,” Marisol said. “Force the DA’s hand. Maybe we need to go to the press.”
For the first time since the beginning of this adventure, Geoff felt a little less naïve than his P.I. He sat up.
“The media, the way they see it, they’ve already solved this thing. The Tatum twins are as good as convicted. Those national cable news guys, they don’t want to dig any deeper—they have a story that sells. And the local press has been eviscerated. I bought a daily down there. One section, barely ten pages long. Half of that obituaries. I’ll bet they don’t have a single full time reporter anymore. They don’t have the depth for any investigative reporting.”
“So the big city media is all we’ve got, and they don’t have a clue.”
“Right. You saw what they did to that deputy Bobby Henderson—”
“Now hey, Waltz, what he said was awful.”
“Untactful at best. And I’m sure the twins are as guilty as sin, whether they were working for Duchamp or Monroe or not. But in context what Bobby implied was that maybe Dalia’s murder was linked to some of these other crimes, based on information I gave him and the sheriff, remember—and the media crucified him for that.”
“But if Kathleen went public, the media would jump all over it—”
“Angry political wife turns on her husband—you’re right. Great gossip value. Problem is, Kathleen looks like the type who’d whither in the spotlight. And anyway she’s lawyering up. She’ll keep mum on the advice of her attorney. The only reason she agreed to talk to us is you scared her shitless the other night.”
Marisol gave him her crooked smile for the first time since that night in New Orleans, before things turned so dangerous. But Geoff thought a distance remained in her eye as she said, “Then what do you suggest?”
“We’ll need some official imprimatur. Eventually the FBI will take this up if things go right. Duchamp’s been under investigation before and he pretty much skated when he agreed to resign. There’s still plenty of people on the Bureau who’d jump at the chance to finish him off.”
“So we go to the Feds?” Marisol smirked. “You know I have some experience with those fools.”
Geoff thought she was playing with him a little bit but didn’t care. He said, “Not yet. The Justice Department higher ups will be reluctant to step in as long as it looks like the local officials are wrapping this thing up nice and tight with no one complaining. Convictions are imminent, then everybody can go home. So before that happens we need to take what we have to the one person in any position of power down there I think we can trust—who can’t stand Duchamp: Sheriff Seastrunk.”
“Maybe, Waltz. But …” She hesitated, chewed a thumbnail. And Geoff saw that her expression had gone dark. Like clouds gathering over a high mountain meadow; a storm brewing without warning.
“But what, Marisol?”
She shook her head, took a long time to answer. Then she said, “My mind keeps going back to New Orleans … what I saw. How it made me feel. This is about more than dirty politics, Waltz. Something bigger.”
Now don’t you go all T-Jacques Rubell on me.
“It’s all the old Duchamp family dirty laundry, Marisol. And it’s going to end with Robert Duchamp behind bars.”
Chapter 31
Geoff found a parking spot in the garden style complex near the Interstate exit to the main road into town. A corner of that town that looked as if it could have been air lifted from any suburb of any city in America. Except there was no city here. Just big box stores and chain restaurants with their parking lots creating seas of concrete; the ugly modern hospital building from which the Reverend had decamped the day before; the elevated highway and its constant roar. Fast food signs towered above it all, beckoning travelers to stop and eat and piss without need of venturing to the town’s distinctive core.
Bobby came to the door in jeans and a
college t-shirt. Out of uniform, the deputy looked younger than his thirty-odd years, like a high school senior on his way out of town. Bobby greeted Geoff and Marisol like old friends, waving them into the combination living-dining room. It had been just over two weeks since their single meeting, the feast at Sally Kincaid’s house the night Geoff leaned of Eileen’s murder. It seemed like much longer.
After their meeting with Kathleen Duchamp, Geoff had pulled out his phone to call Sheriff Seastrunk only to find he had a voice mail from Deputy Henderson. “The sheriff doesn’t want to be involved, but he’s given me pretty much free reign to work with y’all in this investigation,” Bobby had said when Geoff called him back. He understood the politics of it, but Geoff felt a little that the old lion had decided to retreat to his cave, to let his cub hunt for him. Seastrunk had not struck him as so timid.
They sat around Bobby’s plain oak dining table; Geoff thought it looked like a hand-me-down.
“We’ll start with the Dalia Bordelon murder,” Geoff said. “And the subsequent murder in New Orleans of her boss, my consultant, Eileen Kim. Here’s what we’ve got.” He pulled out the ledger books and explained their significance, explained Kathleen’s willingness to testify.
Marisol sat expressionless with her arms crossed before her. On the drive down, the distance, the heart-clinching coldness, the she had exhibited off and on since New Orleans had returned. No hints of the old playfulness that had peeked back out after their interview of Kathleen. As if the nearer they got the center of this thing—heading east, into the pines—the more some nauseating dread embraced her. Impenetrable. And he had stopped searching for any glint in her eye reflecting their shared passion. Just a one night stand, best forgotten, he thought. He’d had others since Janie died. He resigned himself to it.
She said, “We can also document that the refinery Dalia was investigating when she was murdered is still controlled, when you work through the various Texronco subsidiaries and trust funds, by the Duchamp family.” Pausing, she touched her hair and let it fall before her eyes. “And that’s not the least of it. Jimmy Lee Monroe tried to kill me in New Orleans. He shot at Geoff. We have no doubt it was him—I can identify him from photographs, I can identify his truck. And of course he stole our rental car.”
Still not meeting either of their gazes, Marisol threw back her head and stared to the ceiling. “And the New Orleans PD is treating it as a random carjacking. The way they see it, Monroe killed a garage attendant and snuck into my car. Then jacked me when we were isolated. They implied I had it coming for going out to the devastation zone by myself.”
Geoff said, “If you’d told them you worked for me … with the shooting in the bar—”
Marisol looked him in the eye at last, but with a look that made him wish she hadn’t.
“No, I didn’t say much to set them straight. Really not interested in letting them know what I was doing out there when I don’t even know for sure myself.”
Geoff nodded and leaned back and touched his fingers to the healing wound on his skull. A scar, an indentation, the bristly hairs starting to grow in around it.
“Anyway, Monroe was working for someone, and we think we can prove it was Duchamp. He was after a piece of … an item I recovered from Eileen’s property, relevant somehow to my lawsuit about the Duchamp refinery.”
“What item?”
As Geoff opened his mouth to answer, Marisol jumped in. “We don’t know, but something bad.”
“Well,” Bobby said, rising. “Looks like y’all did some fine detective work. Enough to take to the sheriff, I reckon.”
•
Seastrunk seemed impressed, taking in their evidence against Duchamp with widening eyes and subtle nods. When they were through, an electric silence filled the office as the old man leaned back in his chair, hands steepled before his chin. Then he said, “Tell you what, I wouldn’t put a thing past that ol’ son-of-a-bitch. But Lord knows what he could be covering up that would lead to all this killing.”
“I saw something—held it,” Marisol said. “In New Orleans. It was … biological. Maybe related to human cloning. Organ harvesting …”
She looked at the sheriff head on, the hesitancy (terror) she had seemed to exhibit at Bobby’s apartment not in evidence. As if the sheriff’s stature had prodded her to summon her tough professionalism. As if she could allow herself no sign of wilting before authority. Geoff watched her and wondered how much will power her stolid demeanor entailed.
The sheriff said, “Y’all have any proof of this weird devil science?”
“Monroe took it, nearly killed me for it. Gave it to Duchamp, we’re pretty sure. But now … let’s just say it’s lost.”
“Well, I’m just about convinced.” Seastrunk leaned forward, pointing a gnarled finger at no one in particular. “But let me give you a counter-narrative. Monroe used to do odd jobs for Duchamp. But since the bastard’s been out of politics, his ex-fixer has become a lay about. Fell in with that trash, the Tatum twins. They killed that poor Bordelon girl one drunken night. Tatum boys get arrested. Jimmy Lee’s scared. Gets wind y’all are digging into the crime, so he follows you to New Orleans—”
“That’s crazy Sheriff,” Geoff said. “What about Eileen, Dr. Kim?”
“Random. A robbery. I haven’t heard of a lick of hard evidence y’all have tying Monroe to that.”
“Sir, it seems a bit far-fetched—”
“More far-fetched than a Duchamp running a secret cloning facility at that piss ant refinery, Bobby?” The sheriff looked to the three of them one by one. “And far-fetched or not, it’s plausible. And ol’ Hargrave will jump on that plausibility—”
“Then you’ve got to go straight to the FBI, the U.S. Attorney.”
“Nossir, Mr. Waltz. You seen the crowds outside? Now I’ve been keepin’ the peace pretty good. No way I’m going to hand this over to the Feds, make us in this town look like fools to the world.” Half rising from his seat, leaning on massive hands resting on the desk, raised his voice. “And don’t y’all think about going behind my back on this. They’re not going to get involved without me on board, not with the Tatums’ trial coming up, not after Carter vouched for me.” He paused, sat, returned his hands to his chin. “No. What I need is evidence. Hard proof that Duchamp’s compadre Hargrave cain’t ignore.”
They sat. The electricity, the feeling Geoff had sensed of a gathering momentum, had gone out of the room. Geoff met Bobby’s eyes and saw a shared disappointment. It seemed they both wanted Seastrunk to be a hero—to be bold, to take whatever risks necessary to bring about justice. Perhaps, Geoff thought, they had projected onto the old man something that had never been there.
But then Marisol said, “Wait. I might have it.” She retrieved something from her bag. “It’s a long shot, because it was scrubbed clean when I found it. But it came from Duchamp’s study.” She held up a clunky old cell phone.
•
The Speaker paced and smoked and cursed at his lawyer. They debated the efficacy of issuing a press release. They debated whether and when to hold a press conference. Duchamp suggested a targeted interview, like the old days—he would call in to one of the right wing talk radio shows, make his case to a friendly host with a friendly audience, excoriate the elite liberal media that after all these years still worked at every turn to bring him down, laughing at him as if he were a stupid hick undeserving of the name of his forbearers. As if he had not surpassed those forbearers, rising to Speaker, perfecting his role as the leader of the opposition, chief foil to a young, inadequate president—the most powerful figure in a coequal branch of government. He obsessed over the thought circling through his head in some form every day since his forced resignation four years before: Could have been President but for the goddamn media.
Kathleen Duchamp had announced that her husband was no longer welcome in their Dallas home, that she was filing for divorce. The vague insinuations within her statement enraged him. It alluded to nefarious deeds
that would come out in due time.
Beyond that, she remained silent, on the advice of her attorney.
His own lawyer now reminded him that the Washington establishment had already forgotten Robert W. Duchamp, that he could expect no help from those quarters, that the most he could hope for was a booking with a second rate regional shock jock. A counterproductive maneuver. An embarrassment even. As Duchamp fretted, the lawyer sat composed and well pressed and advised the Speaker that the wisest course was to issue a simple press release painting his wife as angry and unhinged, frustrated with their decline in stature since his resignation from Congress. Imply she’s sleeping around, that she’s hoping that by opening the first volley in the court of public opinion, she’s upping her chances for a healthy divorce settlement.
The Speaker fantasized of strangling Kathleen and wept in anger and then in grief at the loss of the woman he had often taken for granted but who he now realized had been a nurturing companion without whom he feared he could not function. He tossed a tumbler across the room and it shattered against the wall. Ice cubes and shards of glass flew. He dismissed the lawyer, his only confidant (for five hundred dollars an hour).
And even the lawyer did not know, had made clear that he did not want to know, the nature and the depth of the Speaker’s crimes.
Falling into an overstuffed armchair, Duchamp held his head in his hands. A divorce, his wife, that whatever Kathleen thought she knew she could share with the authorities—this did not cause Duchamp’s greatest terror. The Group, the Doctor, had turned on him. They could not let him live.
He lifted his head to peer about the casual den in the country home he and Kathleen built when he first decided he would run for Congress, at about the same time he started speaking in an exaggerated Hollywood Texas twang unnatural to his New England roots and ill-suited to his adopted home of red clay dirt and pine forests but sufficient to remake himself before the national media. From a distance, the house looked much older than its thirty years—Doric columns and a sweeping veranda like an antebellum plantation house, rare but not unknown in East Texas. But the brick was veneer and the details reflected the utilitarian cheapness of its era. Duchamp’s constituents accepted the phony accent and the phony house with a wink and a smirk as a ham-handed attempt to express commitment to the community where his father had expanded the family fortune while remaining smug and aloof. But when Duchamp became Speaker, the national media swallowed the rouse as if the Congressman were an organic expression of that place.
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