The Storm

by Blake Banner

  “If I am right, you have been party to a conspiracy to murder, to framing a man for that murder, and the wholesale theft of land. You better start praying that Hurricane Sarah blows all of this away by morning, pal.”

  It was approaching dawn as I made my way back along the devastated roads, among the flooded fields and shredded woodlands, toward Burgundy, but you would not have guessed it. The sky was black with churning clouds that you could almost reach up and touch. No light seeped through that dense nebula. It was the low ceiling of a prison in which the only sentence was hell.

  I left the Dodge back in the parking lot, with a C note on the seat to pay for the damage I’d done, and staggered my way back to the hotel.

  In reception, Luis told me that Carmichael and Bat were asleep upstairs. I looked at my watch. It was six AM. I reached across the counter, picked up the receiver of his phone and punched in Hirschfield’s room number. After a few rings, his angry, sleepy voice said, “Who the hell is this at six in the morning?”

  “It’s Lacklan. Get your ass down here, I have something to show you before I drop dead.”

  “Promises, promises…”

  He let the ambiguity stand and hung up. I looked at Luis. “Coffee, Luis, lots of coffee.”

  I met Hirschfield in the dining room. He looked disgruntled, but toned it down when he saw the state I was in. I buttered a hot roll and poured myself a third cup of strong, black brew. I could see my hand shaking with exhaustion. So could he. He sat and said, “What the hell have you been doing?”

  I nodded. “I need you to listen with great care, Hirschfield, because I might keel over at any moment. Somewhere, in the great fiasco that I am about to describe for you, is the answer to exactly what happened, but I am too tired to see it. So I am going to tell you everything that happened, and I am going to give you these documents…”

  I lifted them off the chair and placed them in front of him.

  “Then I am going to go and sleep for four hours. By the time I wake up, I hope you will have solved the whole mystery, and I can be on my way.”

  He poured himself a cup and picked up a roll. “I am listening.”

  I told him everything. Occasionally, he would stop me, squinting as though either he or I were insane, and say, “You did what?” And I would repeat what I had told him, and carry on. Finally, at about seven, I rose, and he watched me leave the dining room with an expression that you might have described as dismay on his face.

  I reached my bed and passed out.

  Twenty SEVEN

  I slept four hours, then showered and dressed. I didn’t feel rested and everything still ached, but I didn’t feel like I was about to drop dead anymore, and my mind was working just fine.

  I met Hirschfield down in the bar. He was sitting in his corner behind the fern with what looked like a ream of papers spread out all over the tabletop. He glanced at me as I came in, but he didn’t say anything. I ordered a pot of coffee, two cups, and a bottle of J&B Scotch whiskey at the bar. Then I brought them over to the table.

  “Do not,” he said sententiously, “utter the phrase, ‘good morning’, there is nothing good about it, and that it is ante meridium is a fact with which we are both already acquainted. This!” He flicked the backs of his fingers on the papers. “This is a nightmare!”

  I sat, poured us both a cup, and laced them generously with Scotch. I sipped, watching him, and asked, “What’s nightmarish about it?”

  “What isn’t?” he snapped.

  I waited. He sipped and read.

  Finally, I said, “OK, we got that sorted. Now you want to answer my question?”

  He sighed heavily through his large, pock-marked nose.

  “Charles Carmichael entered into a number of extremely lucrative deals involving land development around Louisiana. From what I can see, many of them—most of them—involved land belonging to his wife. It would seem that either he was not developing his own land, or using his own money, or, more likely, there was very little to use. What was happening here, by and large, was that he was de facto acting as his wife’s agent…” He paused and then added savagely, “Prima facie!”

  “Why prima facie, and why do you sound mad about it?”

  Another big sigh. His eyes flicked over the papers on the table. He looked like he was mad at them for not fitting into the patterns prescribed by the law. “Because, there is a body of correspondence, within these documents, that could be construed by a skillful attorney, such as Wilberforce, as a de facto sharing of property.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that though the title…” He glanced at me as though he wasn’t sure I knew what ‘title’ meant. “The legal ownership of the properties involved, the name that appears on the deeds—though that was Sarah Carmichael’s—the rights to development and exploitation were, implicitly, transferred to Charles.”

  I frowned and scratched my head. “Jesus, you’d have to be a lawyer to get to a place like that…”

  “Indeed, and he has a very good one.”

  “So you’re telling me that even though she owned most of this property, because of a bunch of letters and emails that she wrote, it could be interpreted that she had given Charles the right to sell and develop her land as he saw fit?”

  He looked at me as though I had just painted a moustache on the Mona Lisa. “Very much in layman’s terms. It is not just her emails, but a large number of emails exchanged between her, Carmichael, and Wilberforce. An exchange of correspondence can be a contract. Any exchange of words and promises, in whatever form, can be a contract. If I say to you, ‘will you sell me your horse for three hundred dollars,’ and you nod, that is a contract. And more to the point, it is legally binding.”

  I shook my head. “How could you prove it?”

  “That, my boy, is an evidential problem, not a legal one. Just because I can’t prove it, does not mean it isn’t a contract. However, in this case…” He waved a wad of papers at me. “We have ample evidence, in the form of her emails, to prove that she did intend him to act as her agent, and more to the point, she intended him, as her husband, to own property rights in her land! So though he did not own the title, and his name was not on the deeds, she handed over to him most or all of the rights to use the property as though it were his own.”

  “Shit. But they are emails, there is no signature. Surely they have no value…”

  “This is the twenty-first century, Lacklan! What do you think would happen to international trade if emails were not considered by the courts to be binding? The presumption in a court of law is that an email was sent by the owner of the account, and that he intended to say what it says. Anyone alleging the contrary must prove it. So if you want me to go before a judge and claim that these emails are not from Sarah, or that she did not mean to say what is written in them, you must prove it.”

  “What do you think? Do you think they are genuine?”

  He shrugged, spread his hands, and raised his large eyebrows all the way up. “They cover over five years of marriage, and in all that time, she never once sued him or objected to his business activities involving her land. They both made a lot of money and there is no evidence to suggest she was not entirely happy with what he was doing. On the contrary, she seemed to be very happy—according to everybody except Simone, who has a vested interest in proving the contrary.”

  “What about the revised will?”

  “That would cancel his claim to the rights in the property, but where is the original?”

  “Simone’s attorney has it.”

  He picked up his cup in his huge, hairy hand and sipped from it. His signet ring was almost the size of the cup.

  “Wilberforce—Carmichael—they are contesting the validity of the signature. They allege that Simone forged it. They also allege that if she did not forge it, she was exercising undue influence over Sarah.” Again he raised his eyebrows and waved the papers at me. “And they have a good case! I have to tell you, Lacklan, if
I were the judge, or on the jury in this case, so far, I would be persuaded.”

  I sank back in my seat. “Why don’t I believe it?”

  He looked at me. “Perhaps because you are fucking Simone, and she is one of the most sexually alluring women on the planet.” He sighed. “I envy you, you hound! But, Lacklan, here is a man who has devoted his entire married life to making his wife a rich, happy woman. There is not a soul in this town, in this entire parish, who would not vouch for the happiness of their marriage. He has, in every meaningful interpretation of the expression, been a good husband. There is no record anywhere of his having attempted to screw her, except in the idiomatic sense to which he was entitled at law by his status as her husband. He had…” He formed a circle with his thumb and middle finger and punctuated every word as he enunciated it, “No-reason-to-want-his-wife-dead!” He shook his head. “You have not provided me with a motive.” He drew breath and sighed again. “And as to means, Lacklan, your theory so far of his employing Detective Jackson and Ivory as hit men is nothing but fanciful amphigory.”

  “…Amphigory.”

  “Yes.”

  “What about Jackson and Ivory’s behavior last night?”

  “There could be a million and one explanations, many of them brought on by your own, wildly excessive, violent, and menacing behavior. And at the end of the day, if you were a Louisiana jury, who would you believe? A detective with fifteen years experience on the force, or a couple of soldiers of fortune from an English regiment, one of whose fingerprints are still all over the murder weapon?” He flapped his hand at me. “The average IQ is one hundred, Lacklan. That means that in every eight or nine juries, you might get one juror who is actually smart. The chances of Hays’ jury looking beyond the fact that his prints are on the gun that killed Sarah Carmichael are minimal! That-is-the-reality!”

  I sighed. “So we are where we started when I first arrived.”

  He leaned forward and poured more coffee. He took his time unscrewing the cap on the bottle and laced the two cups. Then he sat back and held out one of his huge, hairy hands.

  “Give me one of your Camel cigarettes, will you?”

  I took one myself and handed him the pack. I flipped the Zippo and we lit up. He inhaled deeply, held the smoke a moment and let it out slow, like he was smoking a joint. I figured he was in his sixties and wondered for a moment where he was and what he was doing in the summers of ’68 and ’69.

  “No.” He said it emphatically and shook his head. “You now have a working theory. If—if—it is correct, and not just the product of your lust and your devotion to your friend and colleague, then the proof is out there.” He lifted the papers again. “What this proves is that Sarah owned a lot of land, and Charles did not. It proves that he made deals that purported to be on her behalf. But it shows nothing more.”

  I nodded. “OK. A question, what does it say about the land she had running on either side of Sara Bayou for a mile to the south of the bridge on Tunica Road?”

  He frowned. “That’s the Sara Bayou Park project.”

  “Were the state and the university involved? Was this the Louisiana Regeneration Project?”

  He laughed. “Hardly! The license they were seeking was for a theme park.” He found one of the documents and leafed through it till he found the page he was looking for. “…To create an artificial rapids, to remove poisonous snakes, to keep the existing alligators in captivity, to set up rides, cafeterias, a hotel… You get the idea.”

  I nodded. “I get the idea.” I thought for a while. “Simone told me that Sarah’s dream was to convert that land into a nature reserve, to be used for research by the state and by the university, for the regeneration of the natural environment of Louisiana.”

  He thrust out his bottom lip. “If that is true, you have a conflict between Charles and Sarah involving hundred of millions of dollars. That is a motive for murder.”

  I nodded. “Yes, but surely it would be in Simone’s interest to highlight that conflict.”

  “Didn’t she?”

  I shook my head. “No. She told me he was on board, and loved the idea.”

  He stared around the room, like he had suddenly noticed the décor and thought it was very stupid décor indeed. “That doesn’t make any sense, at all.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  He squinted at me. His face and his voice were incredulous. “Carmichael and Simone…?”

  “She was going to kill him last night.”

  “Why didn’t she?”

  I thought about it. “I don’t know.”

  “Find out.”

  I nodded. “I plan to.”About twenty minutes later, Bat and Carmichael came down. Bat looked like he’d spent the morning relaxing on the beach, Carmichael looked like he hadn’t slept for a week. Bat put Carmichael’s phone on the table and said, “Jackson phoned ten minutes ago. He wants to meet.” He jerked his head at his prisoner and said, “He spoke to his nibs here.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he went to the bar to order more coffee. Carmichael pulled up a chair and sat.

  I said, “What’s the deal?”

  “They hand Simone over to you, you hand me over to them.”

  “Why do they want you so bad?”

  He studied me. His expression was resentful and scared.

  “I employed you to find Sarah’s killer, and all you’ve done is betray me and seek to further Simone’s interests. Why do they want me so bad? Probably because Simone is paying them to kill me off!”

  Bat returned to the table and sat. We stared at each other a moment. It was a semi telepathy that we had developed over the years. I turned back to Carmichael.

  “What are you telling me, that you think Simone was responsible for Sarah’s death?”

  He looked frustrated. “Well, isn’t it beginning to look that way? With me out of the way and no challenge to her fabricated will, she gets everything! Everything that Sarah and I worked for all these years!”

  I thought for a moment. “Speaking of which, tell me about the Sara Bayou Park project.”

  He looked surprised. “What about it?”

  I pointed at the papers on the table. “According to this, it’s a theme park. I thought you and Sarah were on the same page about regenerating the natural environment around here. There is no mention of the involvement of the university, the state, or the CPRA in this project. It sounds more like Disneyland.”

  He nodded. “Yes, that is perfectly true, and Sarah was not happy about it. Neither was I. But there were lots of interests involved and we were both aware that there had to be give and take.”

  I shook my head. “What does that mean, Carmichael?”

  “It means this was a deal that was worth hundreds—hundreds—of millions of dollars. Dollars that we could invest into the Sara Bayou Park project, tax exempt, and at the same time create the Sara Bayou Institute for Research into Environmental Regeneration. But it meant postponing the project a few years.”

  “Where would this park be, if not on the land along the bayou?”

  “That was still under negotiation. Personally, I favored land closer to the coast.” He shrugged. “It would have been more relevant to the cause, and more attractive to the State of Louisiana, and the university. We might have attracted investors from Texas and Florida too.”

  Bat said, “And how did Sarah feel about this delay?”

  “She didn’t like it, naturally. Neither did I. But in business, as in life, things don’t always work out the way you want.”

  I grunted. “But this wasn’t business, was it? This was her life’s dream, being postponed indefinitely, for your business priorities. The fact is, she had everything she needed to be able to go ahead, but you wanted to postpone it so you could make more money.”

  He sighed. “You can put whatever spin you want on it, Lacklan. The fact is that we discussed it and she agreed. And Wilberforce is a witness to that.”

  Bat’s voice was surprisingly bitter. “
Would you have noticed if she hadn’t agreed?”

  Carmichael flushed and half rose to his feet.

  “That is damned impertinent! How dare you?”

  Hirschfield snorted what might have been a laugh. “I think it is very pertinent, Carmichael, and it is also a damned good question. However, it is a question that cannot be satisfactorily answered here and now. As things stand, if I may draw everybody’s attention back to the central fact of this case, the only compelling evidence we have is the fact of Mr. Hays’ fingerprints on the murder weapon. All of your theories, Lacklan, Carmichael, are so much hooey. There is not a single, compelling fact. It is, if you will excuse me, verbiage. Nothing more.”

  I nodded. “Agreed. We need a plan. Where do they want this exchange to take place?”

  “At my house.” He glanced at me without humor. “Please, no explosives! This afternoon. They will insist that you and Mr. Hays are visible and visibly unarmed. You hand me over to them, and they hand Simone over to you.”

  I frowned. “What makes them think we care what happens to Simone?”

  He looked a little embarrassed, like I had said something vaguely inappropriate in polite company.

  “Gossip travels fast in a town like this, Lacklan. She has been observed leaving your room, and you leaving her house in the early morning. Besides…” He shrugged. “If I am right, she has told them that you care for her.”

  “Fair enough. Call him. Set it up. We’ll be there.”

  He frowned and gave a small laugh. “That’s it? You’re going to hand me over? They will probably kill me!”

  I studied his face a moment. “No. We will be unarmed. They will frisk us and find nothing. Then, as the exchange goes ahead, we’ll kill them both. We have all the evidence we need to clear Bat, even if we can’t close the case. That’s not my job.”

  Hirschfield and Bat both frowned. Hirschfield drew breath to speak. I cut him dead.

  “Who pays the bills around here, Hirschfield?”

  He raised a withering eyebrow at me. I held his eye. He closed his mouth and sighed.

  I said, “That’s the way we’ll do it.” I turned to Carmichael. “Are you happy with that?”