Assassin Hunter

by August Palumbo

  “Hey, boy, where did you learn to shoot like that?” Lyle had a serious look on his face.

  “From my mafia relatives.”

  He laughed, but knew that besides the extensive ATF training, I had been a police officer. Then his face got even more serious. “I’ve got a special assignment of my own for you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I can nail a wild rabbit at fifty yards with a shotgun, been hunting all my life. But I can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a handgun. When our firearms qualifying comes up twice a year I stress out. Last time they kept me on the range for three days before I made it, and threatened to redline me. Hell, Tony, I’ll be stuck behind a desk if I don’t make it. Your assignment is get me qualified before I have a heart attack over this shit. The range officer is here tomorrow, it’s our qualification day.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll qualify along with your office tomorrow. Just be sure to get the position next to me on the range and I’ll get you qualified.”

  The following day Lyle drove us to a remote area of east New Orleans where we met with the range officer and about thirty special agents. These were all veterans who had been through the routine of qualifying many times. They all had to maintain the high priority of firearms proficiency by qualifying the ATF course twice a year. Lyle made sure he was in the same wave of shooters with me as we took our firing positions. He took the position next to me. “Now what, Tony?”

  “Now nothing. You just fire the course and do your best. Let me worry about it. You’ll qualify.” He was puzzled, but he turned to face his old nemesis, the familiar black silhouette of a man reaching to his side as if to draw a gun. As we fired the hundreds of rounds at the targets spaced out at different intervals, I concentrated on firing the best I could, assuring as many bull’s eyes as possible on my target. Then, I fired every tenth shot into Lyle’s target, which was next to mine up range. When we got past fifty yards to the target, I fired a couple of additional rounds into his blackened concentric circles. My shots onto his target scored, and compensated for the shots he threw completely off. When the range officer announced the scores, he couldn’t hold back.

  “Holy shit, Melancon. You scored eighty on the first round. Wonders never cease.” He continued calling out the scores, and mine was in the eighties instead of the high nineties, still more than enough to qualify. Nobody knew what happened, including Lyle. When the scores were read, he got an excited but dumb look on his face. He looked at me with the same puzzled expression on his mug that he had before we started. But he remained cool and didn’t say a word. We packed up our gear and got back in his G-car. He couldn’t wait to start talking.

  “I’ve been around the world twice and seen everything three times, but nothing like that. What in hell happened? Did I get better just standing next to you?”

  “You know what happened. Just help me get done with this case before we have to come back and do it again in six months.” He handed me his meaty paw and shook my hand.

  “You’re aces in my book, paisan.”

  The firing range incident began a bonding process that was important to us both. I learned that he was a career agent dedicated to the profession and wasn’t just going through the motions on the job. Lyle found that I could be trusted, would bend the rules and wouldn’t trash his career for the sake of my own if things went sour. He would be my lifeline to the outside world, my only contact with reality once I was submerged in the case. I would have to put my complete trust and faith in him in many ways. I had now established myself with him as a standup guy worthy of his best effort.

  It approached dark and the G-car wound through the streets of the Crescent City to a large gated parking lot. There were many different vehicles stored there, mostly seized by ATF for transporting illegal firearms and forfeited to the government for its use. I looked past the Ford Crown Victorias and Chevrolet Caprices that looked like poorly-disguised squad cars. I declined a beautiful Lincoln Continental as being too flashy, as well as the ostentatious Cadillacs and Mercedes-Benzes that would raise eyebrows in Cajun country. The big cars might raise questions about why a professional killer, a paid assassin, would draw attention to himself with such a vehicle. I picked out a late model midnight-blue Camaro, and although it was winter I made sure the air conditioner worked well, knowing the case might drag on into the warm months that begin early in the deep South. Lyle climbed in the car with me and I quickly tested the V-8 engine’s acceleration from a dead stop. I hit the freeway and opened her up. “Hell, Tony, we’ll never make retirement like this.”

  We drove around the city and Lyle spent the rest of the night giving me a tutorial, a lay of the land and cultural background of the people inhabiting the twenty-two Louisiana parishes known as Acadiana. We stopped in at the Napoleon House, a popular French Quarter bar he seemed to be familiar with. We relaxed and he gave me a history lesson. “The French fled their homeland in the 1700's seeking religious freedom in far away Nova Scotia, then fled there because of British persecution, and finally landed in the swamps and bayous of southwest Louisiana. They found the area conducive to their trades as hunters and trappers, fishermen and shrimpers, and enjoyed the freedoms they sought. They lived close to the land and waterways and preserved a distinct culture and language different from any other in the United States, one that still flourishes.”

  I already knew that the Cajuns were a gregarious clan and that they enjoy the simple things in life like cooking and music, for which they are now famous. But Lyle drilled home a side of the Cajun culture I would soon see for myself. He continued, “Cajuns are frugal, a trait inherited form two-hundred years of fending for themselves, and yet they have a great penchant for gambling. They are clannish in some of their customs, to the point of being secretive. They learn from the cattle and hogs that they raise and slaughter that death is common.”

  He raised his glass and shot down a Black Jack on the rocks. “He needs killing.”

  “What?”

  “He needs killing.”

  “Who does?”

  “That’s a saying, Tony. They use it to refer to somebody they don’t like. But more of an insult is when they call someone common.” I listened intently and made mental notes. Lyle was not only my historian, he was a living, breathing part of what he was explaining. His father had been the county agricultural agent in one of those Acadiana parishes. After a few drinks he found it mandatory to fill me in on how he got into ATF. His education took him into federal law enforcement, first with the old Federal Bureau of Narcotics, FBN, which was a rag-tag, ass-kicking Treasury bureau. It was mostly corrupt but had been the first and only federal agency to identify the mafia as a real criminal organization, even when the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover denied its existence. When the government disbanded the agency, the FBN agents like Lyle were absorbed into the Justice Department’s new drug agency that eventually became the Drug Enforcement Administration.

  “I hated DEA. They’re all backstabbers and social climbers. So I looked around and found ATF as the closest to the old FBN as far as street reputation. And the history of the old Prohibition Unit and Eliot Ness attracted me. I wanted action, so here I am.” It appeared that Phil McKinney and Jim King had done a superior job in selecting my contact agent.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 6

  We headed west on Interstate 10 for the one-hundred- fifty mile trip to Lafayette where we were to meet the confidential informant the next morning. “Bring me up to speed on our suspect, Lyle. And on the informant.”

  “His name is Frank Duplessis. He’s forty-six years old. We don’t know a lot about him other than his record is clean except for a few minor arrests. He trains race horses and runs them at the local tracks. As far as we know he’s just another Coon-ass, but a dangerous one who obviously wants somebody dead on his nickel.”

  “Coon-ass? I thought you Cajuns don’t like that term.”

  “Are you kidding? Years ago it was considered derogatory. A Coon-ass was a
backwards, uneducated swamp dweller. But they readily adopted the term instead of being insulted by it and now they use it among themselves to describe the ultimate Cajun, born and raised in Acadiana who adheres to the customs and lifestyle in every way. To many it’s simply a proud term they tease each other with.”

  “How will I handle the language barrier?”

  “They’ll speak English when they find you’re not one of them. If they continue in French, they don’t want you to know what’s being said.”

  “What about this informant?”

  “The CI’s name is James LeBlanc, but everyone knows him as T-Red.”

  “What the hell kind of name is that?”

  Lyle laughed. “T-Red, T-Joe, T-Lou, T-whatever. In Cajun French the T before a name means little, as in Little Red. They use it as a nickname either because of his stature or because he’s named after his daddy.”

  The full moon allowed us a generous look at the vast swamps and bayous that snake their way through the elevated sections of highway approaching Lafayette. Bald cypress trees laden with moss dotted the shallow water pools along the way. We could see the outline of oyster fishermen in their small pirogues push-poling their way through the Atchafalaya basin. When we arrived in Lafayette, Lyle picked up a G-car and we drove to a restaurant for breakfast, then at five o’clock we went to meet T-Red LeBlanc in the parking lot of an old abandoned Dairy Queen outside the city. We knew that this was the last time he and I would meet for some time. We discussed the details of where and how to get in touch with each other without blowing my cover. Dawn was still breaking when T-Red arrived in an old, faded red pickup truck with one headlight. The windshield had a crack that ran from under the steering wheel up across to the passenger side. The body had dents that resembled sledgehammer marks. The bed was stacked with bales of alfalfa and timothy. These were not the hay bales of a farmer, but of a racetracker supplying expensive forage for the elite thoroughbreds racing at nearby Evangeline Downs.

  T-Red was short, with a compact build and reddish-brown hair that easily accounted for his nickname. He sported a thick moustache that matched in color. His small but muscular frame and leathered face, coupled with the racehorse feed in his truck, told me right away that he probably was an ex-jockey and one of the exercise riders at the track. He wore the usual backstretch attire of blue jeans, white at the pressure points from wear. His boots showed equal wear but were of expensive brown leather, and he wore a plaid western shirt, topped with a sleeveless insulated jacket which allowed the arms freedom while reining a galloping horse. Although we were in an isolated area on a rural road, his eyes darted back and forth to see if anyone else was around. The old ice cream stand was surrounded by woods, and the nearest anything was a half-mile away on either side. Lyle greeted him in Cajun French and was answered in the same language. He introduced me as Tony Parrino from New Orleans. There was no need for him to know my real name, and he would know me by the undercover identity I had spent several years to establish. Tony Parrino was the name I used because of its consistency with my Italian background, and so I could use my real initials on monogrammed clothing or if I needed to place my initials anywhere.

  T-Red crossed his arms and propped a foot on the front bumper of his truck. He started to tell us what he knew about Frank Duplessis and how he became involved in the situation. "Frank is a sour son-of-a-bitch. He’s a serious man and I don’t take anything he says lightly. He keeps to himself and minds his own business. He has some wealthy thoroughbred owners as clients. He’s a crackerjack horseman and knows his shit around the racetrack,” he continued. His eyes still surveyed the area every few seconds. He got more nervous as the story went on. “Frank came up to me in the track kitchen and asked me in French if I still hung out at The Gallop. When I said yes, he told me he needed to make a contact there to get a job done. He was kind of evasive at first, but he eventually told me he needed something done that only the boys from New Orleans could handle well.” T-Red looked all around once again. “He wants somebody killed.”

  “The Gallop is a large joint located near Evangeline Downs,” Lyle said. “The local police characters hang out there as well as the transient thugs. Dope deals go down and whores are run out of there. Every piece of shit crossing the country from California to Florida by means of I-10 winds up in The Gallop. It’s where the assholes of the world meet and greet. Some of the tame racetrackers hang out after the races but, in general, it’s a blight. You know, Tony, it’s your kind of place.”

  We both chuckled, but T-Red still had the nervous look on his face. He picked up his story. “Everybody around here who’s been around knows that The Gallop is really owned by the New Orleans mafia, although Cliff Dubroc runs the place. Frank Duplessis knows a lot of characters hang out there and he wants me to hook him up with somebody who can do the job for him.” T-Red began to shift weight on his heels and weave back and forth, which showed his anxiety was reaching a peak. “Look, I never get involved in this kind of shit. I would normally just blow it off and not say anything to anybody. But knowing Frank and knowing the connections at The Gallop, I know the deal will happen if something isn’t done. I don’t want that on my head and I don’t want to be mixed up in it in any kind of way.”

  “You are mixed up in it, Red,” I told him in a low voice. I stood close to him and looked directly into his eyes. “Frank Duplessis didn’t go to a priest for help, he went to you. And he did that because he knew you had the in, so let’s not bullshit, okay? Maybe you dimed on him because of your concern for your fellow man or maybe just to protect your own ass if the hit goes down. At this point it doesn’t matter, because you’re in it up to your Cajun ass.” T-Red was stunned. He looked at Lyle as if to ask for help of some kind. The first words I spoke to him established my experience and let him know that I was streetwise. I let a few seconds pass for emphasis before I continued. “Here’s the deal, Red. I need an intro at The Gallop and around the track. I have a racetrack background but I need you to set me in. We’ll pal around together for a while until I’m eased in, then I’ll cut you loose and take it on my own from there.

  “How long will that take?” he asked.

  “That depends on how well we both do our jobs, and a lot of luck.”

  “What if I bow out and forget this whole deal right now?”

  “If you don’t go for it, you’re on your own and you’d better pray that Duplessis hasn’t already made the deal with a killer. In that case, you’re under the glass for not reporting a murder plot until it was too late. Are you game?”

  “I don’t have much choice, do I? I knew when I contacted ATF this wouldn’t be easy. I just hope you can cut me out of this as soon as possible. You guys have a lot of balls but you're fucking crazy. Anything can go wrong.”

  “Nothing goes wrong if you follow instructions.” I gave him the phone number at my hotel and told him to call me later that afternoon. Before T-Red left for his work at the track, Lyle rattled off something to him in Cajun French which he acknowledged, then drove off.

  “What’s that you said about people around here speaking French when they don’t want their conversations understood?”

  He laughed and said, “Don’t worry, I just let him know that if he fucked up he’d have both of us to worry about, I’d cut his ass up and throw it into a nice gumbo.” He left in his G-car and I lingered for a minute, breathing in the thick, humid, swamp air. Dust flew from the wheels of my car, along with fragments of oyster and clam shells used as road bedding in that part of the country. I wheeled from the old lot, and drove to the Plantation Inn and checked in. The place was decent and nondescript, was located near the racetrack, and was frequented by horsemen shipping in to run at Evangeline Downs. Lyle had scouted it out as a good place to locate.

  I set up house in the hotel on a monthly rate. I caught an hour of sleep, then went to the hotel coffee shop and picked up a copy of the Daily Racing Form and thought about the meeting with T-Red. I had met many like him growing up
near the Fairgrounds racetrack in New Orleans.

  My uncle had trained horses there and brought me on the backstretch when I was six or seven years old. I grew to love the atmosphere and the fierce competition among the horse owners, trainers, jockeys, grooms, hot-walkers, veterinarians, farriers, and others who made their living from the industry. New Orleans has always been a winter racing center, and as a teenager I worked every weekend on the backstretch as a groom or hot-walker, cooling out the horses after the races. After class at Jesuit High School I would go to the backstretch barn, mix the horses’ feed, and administer any vitamins or special medication they needed. If we had a horse running in a late race, I prepped him, tacked him up and walked him over to the paddock for saddling. After the race I’d bathe the animal and cool him out, then bandage his legs and feed him. In short, I knew the backstretch routine as well as anyone. My racing career was sabotaged when I became a police cadet right out of high school, working for the department while squeezing out enough credits to earn a degree in criminology from Loyola University.

  I also knew that the sport of kings was replete with hustlers, gamblers, cheats, drunks, drug users, and bust-out artists. These characters are generally allowed to thrive on the nation’s tracks because they are isolated communities. Only those licensed by state racing commissions can even set foot on the backstretch, and as a rule local police don’t patrol the areas or enforce laws there unless called in by track security. This allows many fugitives, illegal aliens, and assorted outcasts to function in this closed society. The situation is tolerated because of the transient nature of the business, with horses and personnel moving from track to track as their seasonal meets open and close. The pay of the grooms and hot-walkers, the backbone of the industry, is quite meager and an ironic contrast to the fortunes spent on many of the horses under their charge.