“What about the boy, Herrington? Even if you kill me, that won’t solve your problem,” I bluffed, “because I’ve taken precautions.”
Herrington clenched his teeth. His face turned florid.
Tony Micelli had really been on to something. I had no idea what “the boy” meant, but Herrington obviously did.
Herrington put down his glass and gripped the pistol with both hands.
Approaching me, he aimed at my forehead.
Chapter 77
The band’s blues music wafted through the open window, echoing up from the capitol steps twenty-four floors below. There was utter hatred in Herrington’s face and a deadly weapon in his grasp.
I quickly tried to figure the angles. Could I knock the gun away with my one good hand? Unlikely. Herrington had carefully stayed at least an arm’s length away, and I couldn’t be sure I was steady enough to jump him. He’d shoot the moment I stirred.
Could I yell for help? Who would hear me? Although the window was open, the band below was playing so loudly it would drown out any noise I could possibly make.
No one other than Frankie, Ribeye, and Herrington knew I was here. No rescuers would arrive.
And even if Herrington didn’t shoot me here, he clearly had something in mind. Something that he had carefully planned. Undoubtedly with the help of Paolo Micelli. Which meant that Tony Micelli was headed for disaster too.
We both stood motionless for several moments. I didn’t dare move a muscle.
Herrington seemed to loathe my very existence.
Then, as if in slow motion, he backed away, the gun still leveled at my head. He turned one of the leather chairs around, sank into it, and rested his hand on his thigh, the pistol now pointing squarely at my chest.
Without taking his eyes off me, he reached back and grabbed his glass and took a
gulp.
“The boy. The boy. Fucking G.G. and the fucking boy.”
He put down the glass and, without loosening his grip on the pistol, pulled his cell phone off the clip on his belt and hit a speed-dial number. “Come on back up. I’m going to need your assistance. You’re gonna like this.”
Back went the phone into its clip and up came the tumbler of bourbon. “You have just made two guys very happy. Plan B is what they wanted all along. I won’t get headlines for fending you off, but at least the press will have the satisfaction of knowing that Spider Louiviere’s killer died a horrible death in a tragic car accident.”
He had called Frankie and Ribeye. Once they arrived, I would have no chance at
all.
So, I did the only thing I could do.
I tried to stand up straight, chin high, but my knees buckled.
I collapsed to the floor in front of the credenza.
I fell on my left side and I screamed in agony as my injured arm hit the floor and the blood poured out.
I had pretended that my knees buckled.
But the screaming and blood were all too real.
Chapter 78
Herrington didn’t move off his chair to help me.
“Get up. Now you’ve done it. Ruined my carpet! God, I had hoped to avoid this. I love this furniture. But it can’t be helped.”
He got up and started knocking over lamps and turning over tables.
I had landed exactly the way I had planned. My body was between the cordless phone and Herrington so that he couldn’t see it. I grabbed the receiver with my one good hand, stuck it in my waistband, and headed towards the open window, keeping my back to the room.
“JUST FUCKING WAIT.” Herrington shouted. “We’ll get to that soon enough. But first, we need to find out exactly what you know and whether you were really taking any precautions. Because once we figure that out . . .”
I didn’t stop. I worked my way up onto the windowsill, my back still to Herrington.
“Oh God! You’re an idiot,” Herrington said, seeing where I was headed, “and I’m a bigger one.”
I scrambled out the window, trying to ignore the flames of torment that consumed my left arm, and clambered onto the narrow ledge. Moving to the right, I pushed my body flush against the marble exterior of the building, trying not to look down. Blood from my left arm smeared the marble behind me and dripped onto the thin ribbon of concrete beneath my feet.
Herrington grabbed at my leg.
I yelled loudly, although there was no one to hear me except Herrington, because the music below was blaring. I shook free and inched further down the ledge, away from the open window, my feet sliding dangerously on the bird guano that coated the narrow concrete perimeter. I crawfished sideways along the ledge as quickly as I could.
“YOU WERE BLUFFING! YOU LITTLE SHIT! YOU WERE BLUFFING!”
Herrington was now leaning out the window, gun in hand, yelling at me and trying to make himself heard above the music billowing up from the steps far below.
The first of the concrete pelican busts loomed before me, lit brightly from below by the ring of huge halogen lights positioned on the eighteenth floor ramparts, illuminating not only the top of the capitol but also the pelicans on the twenty-fourth floor.
I managed my way around the pelican and continued my tiny sideways steps, each one taking me farther from Herrington’s window.
“IF YOU HAD TAKEN ‘PRECAUTIONS,’ AS YOU SAID, YOU WOULDN’T
BE OUT HERE.” Herrington was screaming at me, knowing no one below could hear him.
The bust of the second pelican was before me. I straddled that one, trying to shield my eyes from the glare of the eighteenth floor lights, got to the ledge on the other side, and kept moving away. But I made sure Herrington heard what I had to say. “I know about the payments you made to G.G. as well.”
Another bluff. Let’s see how close Taylor was to the truth.
“THE FUCKING PAYMENTS! G.G. WOULDN’T STOP, WOULD HE? PERMITS WERE NOT ENOUGH! HE WANTED ALL THAT MONEY TOO? AND THEN TAYLOR WANTED IT? AND THEN SPIDER? WELL THEY ALL GOT WHAT THEY DESERVED, DIDN’T THEY? I MADE SURE G.G. GOT IT. AND SPIDER GOT IT. AND NOW YOU’LL GET THE SAME!”
Perfect! That gave me exactly what I wanted.
I got too confident.
I lost my focus.
My foot slipped on the guano.
“HA!” Herrington was triumphant. “KILL YOURSELF! SAVE ME THE TROUBLE.”
I struggled to regain my balance.
Only by the barest did I steady myself, but I found I couldn’t move further down the ledge. The soles of my shoes were slippery from the bird droppings.
It was all I could do to stay exactly as I was, forcing my body against the wall, and praying that my shoes stayed on the thread of concrete.
Herrington perched his ass on the windowsill and squinted, trying to see me fifteen yards away, the bright lights on the concrete pelicans making the shadows where I hid even harder to penetrate.
Herrington leaned out the window, holding onto the wooden frame with one hand.
“This is going to be fucking easier than I thought, Schex.” He had ceased yelling. He had calmed down. “It’s just a matter of time! I’m going to enjoy watching you weaken and then fall. I can sit here all night, if necessary.”
“Too late, Herrington.” I slowly extended my right hand from the shadow into the glare of the lights.
Herrington leaned out further to get a good look to see what I was holding.
“FUCK IT ALL. FUCK YOU!”
He had seen the cordless phone. The green light was on. I had managed to pull it out of my waistband and dial my own number right after Herrington had grabbed at my leg and before he had stuck his torso out the window. My screaming in pain as I lay on
the floor after my knees ‘buckled’ hid the dial tones. The answering machine at my house was recording everything.
“DIE NOW, YOU BASTARD!! LEAP!!!!”
A spurt of light from the barrel of Herrington’s gun.
The marble a few feet to the left of my cheek shattered.
I tried to move an
other few millimeters. It was too slippery.
Another shot. Above my head. Splinters of marble showered down.
I looked back.
Herrington wasn’t deliberately missing. He just couldn’t get a good aim from this angle. The bourbon he had consumed wasn’t helping either.
Herrington crawled out onto the ledge.
A third shot. This was closer.
If it had not lodged in the concrete head of the huge pelican bust between me and Herrington, the bullet would have hit my groin.
He was now yelling again. “YOU THINK I CAN’T GET AND CONTROL RECORDS OF CALLS MADE FROM MY OWN PHONE! BEFORE YOUR BODY IS COLD WE’RE GOING TO KNOW WHERE YOU CALLED AND THAT WILL BE
AS DEAD AN ISSUE AS G.G. AND SPIDER . . . AND YOU!”
He climbed out near the head of the first pelican too so that he could get a direct hit.
I felt it before I heard it.
A sharp shove in my left shoulder. My injured left side.
It was someone pushing me with a blunt club.
I held on to the wall.
Someone hitting me with a bat.
Someone ramming me with huge pole.
Someone ripping open the skin and pulling out my muscles.
The agony from the bullet coursed from my shoulder to my gut, and yet I also felt strangely detached, as if this unbearable misery was being experienced by someone else. I rested my cheek against the cold stone and used all my remaining strength to stay on my feet.
The recoil from the pistol had thrown Herrington off balance.
He started to lose his footing on the ledge.
Herrington moved his feet too quickly, trying to catch himself. His shoes slid over the pigeon droppings and off the ledge.
Herrington reached out for the windowsill with his left hand, his stomach now resting on the parapet, his feet dangling in the air inches from the pelican. His right hand still held the gun.
Our eyes met.
Herrington tried to bring the handgun up again to shoot, but his body slid further off the ledge. Only his chest was on it now.
Herrington fired again.
The shot hit the wall inches from my stomach, pelting me with white marble gravel.
Herrington lost his grip on the windowsill. He let the pistol drop. It fell in and out of the shadows of the building as it plummeted down, a dark shape growing smaller and reflecting odd rays of light.
His body slid off the ledge. He tried to grab onto the sill with his right hand, but could not.
Herrington frantically kicked his feet, searching for the head of the concrete pelican. He tried to get his legs around it as he fell from the ledge onto the crown of the bust.
He rested there a minute, the pelican clutched between his thighs, riding the large sculptured creature and gazing at me with unbounded malevolence.
The look on his face turned to utter panic as he began to slip downward.
He flung his arms around the bird, embracing it, clinging to its huge head and neck like a terrified baby cleaving to its mother. But, he couldn’t hold on. Couldn’t get a grip. He dug his fingers into the concrete, looking for a non-existent handhold, tearing the flesh off the pads of his palms.
The last I saw of Herrington? It was his fingers slipping off the pelican’s head and neck. They left five narrow trails of blood on either side of the concrete creature.
Chapter 79
The next two weeks were a blurred continuum of painkillers, sedatives, sleeping pills, phone calls, and visitors.
I don’t remember how I got off the ledge. I learned that it must have been Frankie who had pulled me in and summoned an ambulance. It was his voice on the 911 call. I couldn’t figure out why Frankie would have helped me. By the time the capitol police and the state police and ambulance arrived, Frankie and Ribeye had disappeared and still haven’t been located.
The hospital? I have no memory of the emergency room or of either of my two operations. All I recall were the washed out pastel green walls of my room and the nurses who disturbed my fitful sleep, prodding and poking me for this test or that medication.
Next? Endless questioning. The Baton Rouge police. Sheriff Isaiah Brown of the St. Bonaventure sheriff's office. The State Police. EPA investigators. DEH investigators.
The State Police played my answering machine recording over and over. They parsed each of Herrington’s statements. It convinced them that G.G. had been blackmailing Herrington, which gave Herrington a motive to murder G.G.
In light of Herrington mentioning phone records, the cops went back and reviewed every call to and from all of Herrington’s many numbers. The two lines at his house. His cell phone. His multiple office lines. The phones at each of the businesses in which he had an interest – one of which turned out to be Wholesale Flesh and Fur.
They also subpoenaed all the phone records of Taylor and Spider. Spider’s cell phone was never found, but they were able to retrieve a record of the calls he made the night he was murdered. The last call was to Herrington.
When the police asked me why that might be, I reminded them about what Spider had told me after he gave me the Camellia Industries’ boxes in the parking lot of Poirrier’s. Spider had been upset to learn that I was not going to be Taylor’s criminal lawyer. Spider said he would get the money to hire a top-notch criminal lawyer. Who would he approach? The man he knew G.G. had a close relationship with, a rich man with a bundle of assets – Herrington. But Spider didn’t know about G.G.’s blackmail, so when Spider went to Herrington for a loan to help Taylor, Herrington probably assumed that this was more blackmail, and that’s why Herrington killed him.
What really happened no one will ever know. But I’m sticking with my theory on that one. I’m figuring that Herrington was as concerned about additional blackmail from Spider as he apparently was when Taylor came to him for help. But, of course, I couldn’t tell the police anything about what Taylor had told me without violating the attorney- client privilege I had with her.
I told the police about the loan Tony Micelli had made to Camellia. No reason to hide that. No privilege protected that information. The cops questioned Micelli extensively, but his financial paperwork was in impeccable order. How G.G. used the blackmail funds didn’t affect the legitimacy of Micelli’s loan or of G.G.’s repayment of it. Herrington had apparently dipped into his campaign funds and siphoned money out of other business interests in which he had held a secret interest to avoid reporting those on his annual state ethics forms.
What about the missing $513,113 that Frankie and Ribeye had taken from me? There was no need to mention any of that. Besides, what could I say that wouldn’t incriminate me?
Chapter 80
Lolly came by the hospital to tell me that the charges against Taylor had been dismissed. The authorities were convinced Herrington had murdered both G.G. and Spider. They closed their investigation. Lolly also told me about Camellia Industries being permanently shut down by the courts. The DEH was being reorganized. The EPA was examining Rad’s videos and the records of all the plants serviced by InDispoCo. And Lolly thanked me. She still held the mortgage on Taylor’s home, the mortgage Taylor had given her when there was no cash for Lolly’s fee. Lolly had given Taylor another week before starting foreclosure proceedings.
Even got a visit from Sheriff Isaiah Brown. He had located Kirk/Kuo and had found out why Trey’s former employee had been trying to see me. After Kirk/Kuo was fired, he wanted some legal advice on getting his job back – he had six young kids, a sickly wife, two elderly parents, and was his family’s sole breadwinner. He desperately wanted to be rehired, and he knew that Herrington was a silent partner of Wholesale Flesh and Fur and the real brains behind the operation. The “late night meetings” Kirk/Kuo had referred to in his note to me were meetings between Herrington and Trey at the plant. Kirk/Kuo didn’t trust Trey and hadn’t trusted the sheriff initially, because he wasn’t sure whether the sheriff was allied with Herrington. Sheriff Brown, however, was not allied wit
h anyone.
The sheriff came to the same conclusion that I did. Kirk/Kuo had locked the freezer. Herrington had either murdered Spider or arranged for his murder. When the sheriff confronted Trey about Herrington’s silent ownership, Trey admitted it, as well as the fact that his uncle had a key to the facility. Of course, Trey had been too thickheaded to suspect his uncle of any wrongdoing – Trey owed his entire career to Herrington. And now that his uncle was gone, Trey would own Wholesale Flesh and Fur outright. He would find another waste disposal company and continue operating.
I received lots of get-well cards, including from Weegie, Rad and Joleese, the President of the local Bar Association, and even from the Governor. Also got a card from Hubbard Estes with a hand-written note inside.
Taylor hadn’t come to the hospital. She hadn’t sent a card, and she hadn’t called.
Chapter 81
After the doctors released me, Washington spent a week at my house nursing me along, and Durnella took over my kitchen. “Put meat on those bones,” she’d say, forcing me to take another helping of crawfish etouffee, turtle soup, fried shrimp, and oyster pie, as well as the French bread that she baked every morning. As she heaped each meal on my plate, she’d lecture, “If you don’t eat, you’ll never get on the healin’ side.”
Beebo had called and sent George over with gumbo and jambalaya. Ice chests full of food. Enough for a month. Of course, that got Durnella furious and she sent it all to the orphanage. She said that she didn’t rightly know how I was going to get well if all I ever had was “plate lunches from a bar!”
Ten days later I was finally on my own. I wasn’t fully recovered, and my left arm was still in a sling, but everything had quieted down.
I was surprised, therefore, when early one morning there was a knock at my front
door.
It was Tony Micelli.
We went into the conference room and he placed an expandable briefcase on the table. “It’s all here,” he said. “I didn’t even deduct costs. As you know, I play for the long term. Always want to have complete legality and traceability. At least from my end. So, sign the receipt.”
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