Wolf's Bane td-132

by Warren Murphy

  "That's a new automated system for weeding out undesirable calls," Smith explained quickly. "Believe it or not, there are people out there who have nothing better to do than see what happens if they hold down their 1 button. The system will let you through as soon as you speak and it recognizes your voiceprint. Now give me your report."

  "Fine, thanks," Remo complained. "The report is I just spent my evening chasing wolves around N' awlins."

  "Yes, we've been getting the reports of several wolf attacks in the French Quarter," Smith said. "Also about the attack on the Romany camp. I spoke with Master Chiun about that earlier. I wish you would have phoned more quickly, Remo. Master Chiun is not, er, precise when it comes to details."

  "Yeah, well, I was busy." Remo quickly ran down the events that had occurred since arriving in New Orleans. He ended by describing his questioning of the last wolf.

  "You questioned it?" Smith asked dubiously.

  "I tortured it, if you must know," Remo said.

  "And?" Smith asked noncommittally.

  "It talked."

  "It talked?"

  "Yeah."

  "The wolf talked?"

  "Read my effing lips. It effing talked, Smitty. The thing used to be human. Dr. White's really outdone herself this time."

  "Remo," Dr. Smith said quietly, "I agree that Judith White achieved some shocking physiological changes in her subjects. But to make a man into a wolf-it seems unlikely."

  "Figure it out for yourself," Remo said. "I've got one of the chatterboxes in the trunk of the rental. Test him out. You're gonna find all kinds of DNA or genetic material or whatever little buggies people normally have that wolves don't."

  "Is it-"

  "Dead as a doornail, and it'll be getting ripe by morning. Have somebody come pick it up." Remo gave Smith the location in Westwego he expected to be leaving the car and described his plans for moving into the bayou-and forcing Leon Grosvenor into the open.

  "All right." Smith sighed heavily. "It'll take some doing, but I'll have it picked up and sent to a private lab for testing. When will you be able to report in again?"

  "First phone booth I find in the bayou," Remo said.

  "How will you get the test results?" Smith asked. "They could be revealing as to the nature of these creatures."

  "I know their nature, and it ain't natural," Remo said. "My objective is to make them dead. Except Leon. Him I want to ask questions and then make dead."

  "You still think he'll give you a lead on Judith White?" Smith asked.

  Remo felt grim and he said, "No. But it can't hurt to ask. Can't hurt me, anyway. Now, Leon, it's gonna hurt."

  "YOU SURE about this, Reverend?"

  "Course I'm sure," the portly televangelist told Jeremiah Smeal. "It's perfect, son. I know exactly what I'm doin'. Just you wait and see."

  The Reverend Rockwell could sympathize with Smeal's misgivings, staring at the empty auditorium and hearing all that whoop-to-do outside. As far as he could figure out, no one had ever tried to stage a mass revival in New Orleans during Mardi Gras, much less right smack-dab in the middle of the French Quarter, but that was what appealed to Rockwell. He would be the first, which meant he would be noticed. That meant free publicity!

  The campaign TV spots were eating up his money faster than he had expected, and he didn't like those rumors that the IRS was gearing up to scrutinize his books at JBN. Rockwell had a team of born-again accountants handling the money side of things, with strict instructions not to leave a paper trail, but there was always something for a bloodhound to latch on to if you let him sniff around for very long.

  Rockwell's temporary answer to the two-fold problem, ready cash and federal scrutiny, was Mission Mardi Gras, two nights of hellfire and damnation-with an option for a third night, if the crowds were large enough-that would replenish empty coffers and supply him with a whole new audience. The program would be run in its entirety on JBN, of course, but local TV news had also been alerted to stand by for something big from Reverend Rockwell.

  The auditorium was one block south of Charles, near Audubon Park. It wasn't huge compared to some of the New Orleans theaters and concert halls, but Rockwell had chosen it both for its proximity to the French Quarter and for the nightly rental rate, which he found very reasonable.

  And with any luck at all, there would be news cameras on hand to catch the show.

  As if in answer to his thoughts, Smeal said, "You think they'll come?"

  Rockwell didn't have to ask who they were. News people with minicams. The sacred talking heads. "They'll come," the televangelist replied. "God told me so."

  That wasn't strictly true, of course. The scheme had come to him while he was on the toilet, battling the chronic constipation that had plagued him ever since he tossed his halo in the ring to run for governor. Rockwell had been straining like a modern Jacob wrestling with the angel and refusing to give up before he got his blessing, when it hit him. First, the flood gates opened down below, and then a light went on upstairs: a Mardi Gras revival! Free airtime!

  He would present the greatest story ever told to fans and new recruits alike, while just outside the door old Satan staged his biggest party of the year.

  He scanned the silent auditorium, imagining a crowd that spilled into the aisles, all swaying, chanting, lifting hands to Jesus, opening their wallets, purses, cracking piggy banks.

  "I want this whole place SRO tomorrow night," the reverend told his flunky.

  "SRO?"

  "Standing room only," Rockwell explained, and offered up a silent prayer for patience in the face of rank stupidity. "I don't care if you have to drag them off the street in costume," he continued. "Better yet, I want a few of them in costume. Maybe half a dozen."

  "Right," Smeal said. "What for?"

  "To show the power of the word," Rockwell said, remembering that patience was a virtue of the saints. "Poor sinners out there drinkin', fornicatin' in the streets, dressed up like demons out of hell itself, but even they find Jesus in New Orleans. Even they receive his message. Even they are saved."

  He fell into the singsong pattern of his TV sermons automatically, from force of habit. "Even they can testify to Christ's redeeming glory. Everyone out there in television land will feel the power of His message."

  "Amen!" enthused Jeremiah Smeal. The Reverend Rock was on a roll.

  "YOU SURE about this, Elmo?" Maynard Grymsdyke sounded dubious.

  "Hell, yes, I'm sure," Breen said. "The polls tell me we're twenty points ahead of that ol' son of a bitch in New Orleans, nearly twenty-five statewide. Besides, it's Mardi Gras."

  "I still think-"

  Elmo frowned and raised an open hand to silence Grymsdyke. "Just this once," he said, "don't think."

  "But Elmo-"

  "Son, I been in Louisiana politics for almost forty years," Breen said. "One thing I know beyond a shadow of a doubt is how to get things done. I don't know how they play the game where you come from, but here in Louisiana, money greases the machine. This weekend, I'll be spending time with three of our top five supporters in the state."

  It would have been all five, but two of them were sadly "unavailable"-one shacked up with his latest teenage girlfriend, while the other had a sit-down with a group of silent partners in Miami. Breen would catch them in another week or two.

  "I understand, sir. But a hunting trip? I mean, it's not-"

  "Politically correct?" Breen finished for him. "Jesus, Maynard, why don't you wake up and smell the coffee for a change? You think the folks who matter give a damn about all that shit down here?"

  "So, you'll be out of touch all weekend," Maynard said, deciding it was useless to protest further.

  "We'll be out of touch," the would-be governor corrected him. "You're going with us, Maynard."

  Grymsdyke shook his head fervently. "The campaign! I've got a thousand things..."

  Breen smiled. "None of that, now. It'll do you good to meet the boys, get out and breathe some fresh air for a change,
instead of all this air pollution shit. I got an extra 12-gauge you can use. Who knows, you may get lucky. Make a man out of you yet."

  Grymsdyke flushed, insulted and uncomfortable with the plan, but he knew better than to argue. "I swing by for you in the limo," Breen said. "Make it half-past four, so we aren't late to meet the others."

  "Half-past 4:00 a.m." Grymsdyke's enthusiasm knew no bounds.

  "And where is it we're going, once again?"

  "Out to the bayou country, Maynard. Down below Westwego. It's a different world, believe me. You'll see things you never seen before, I guarantee."

  Chapter 14

  The bayou country of Louisiana bears no great resemblance to Florida's Everglades. The Glades are mostly open to the sky, the water rarely more than five or six feet deep. Louisiana's bayous, by comparison, are dark and dreary places, sheltered by the looming cypress trees and mangroves that were old before the first conquistadors arrived with swords and muskets to "convert" the natives and turn them into slaves. Some of the swamp country has yielded, through the intervening centuries, retreating from the swarm of men and their machines, but much remains intact, still waiting for the men to drop their guard.

  Remo thought the whole place smelled, well, swampy.

  Their vessel followed Highway 90 to Westwego, on the fringe of bayou country. Most of the Louisiana coastline was consumed by swampland, dark and dangerous, with scattered settlements of fishermen and bankrupt shrimpers.

  "I thought you said this tub was new," Remo complained.

  Jean Cuvier peered back at Remo from beneath the long bill of a faded baseball cap. He seemed at home behind the wheel of the small rented cabin cruiser.

  "I don't recollect saying she was new," the Cajun said. "New boat in these parts, I don't reckon you can find at any price. This baby gets us where we need to go, I guarantee."

  That was another thing. It had seemed curious to Remo that the Cajun's "old friend" in Westwego didn't bat an eye when Cuvier showed up in such strange company, after a year in hiding from the mob, and asked to rent a boat. It smelled like a setup, and while Cuvier was wise enough to lie about their destination, Remo guessed that it wouldn't take much detective work for his good buddy at the rental dock to find out where they went and pass the word along. The swamp was full of eyes. Remo and Cuvier still had to get a fix on Leon Grosvenor's lair before they even knew where they were going, much less how long it would take.

  "You're taking quite a chance," said Remo, "checking in with your old pals like this. What makes you think they won't sell you out to Bettencourt, or try to pick up the bounty themselves?"

  "Truth is, this is my only chance," said Cuvier. "If you don't get Leon before he gets to me, I'm good as dead. These other folks ain't family now. They know all about my beef with Armand, but I reckon they hear Leon's in it, too. That will keep them off, I'm pretty sure."

  "And if you're wrong?"

  "Dead's dead," the Cajun said. "I just as soon get shot as be ate by old loup-garou."

  "And if these folks are scared of Leon," Remo pressed, "what makes you think they'll tell us where to find him?"

  "That's called 'heads I win and tails you lose,'" Cuvier said. "They figure Leon's looking for us and they sent us out there, they be doing him a favor. Make it easier for him to kill us, like. Now, if we get lucky and ol' Leon bite the bullet, they still come out clean. No loup-garou around to hassle them no more."

  "Good thinking, I guess," Remo said doubtfully.

  "You sell these bayou people short," said Cuvier, "you make a big mistake, I guarantee."

  Their next stop was a mile or so inside the bayou proper. They had been traveling southwestward from the rental dock. Remo wondered if Cuvier had any idea where they were and where they were going.

  Their pit stop didn't seem to be a settlement. No houses were visible, nothing, in fact, except a kind of general store that stood up on stilts above the water. A wooden dock protruded from the front porch of the store, and Remo tied off the cabin cruiser as Cuvier prepared to go ashore.

  "Want company?" he asked.

  "I best do this myself," the Cajun said.

  It was another gamble, putting Cuvier within reach of the locals. Remo was still uncertain whether they would try to kill him or if Cuvier was working some weird angle of his own. But his reading of the Cajun told him Cuvier was doing everything within his power to survive.

  Three men were lounging on the shaded front porch of the store. Remo thought they looked like extras from Deliverance or Southern Comfort, or maybe Soggy Bottom USA. Each was in faded denim overalls, two were barefoot, one without a shirt to hide his scrawny chest and shoulders. Thankfully there didn't seem to be a banjo in the house.

  He leaned against the cabin cruiser's rail and eavesdropped as the three men greeted Cuvier without apparent animosity. One of the locals cocked his head toward Chiun, sitting the forward deck, and made a reference to "the Chinaman old enough to be the first emperor of China." They had no way of knowing Chiun could hear every word they said perfectly.

  "No killing," Remo pleaded under his breath as the porch-sitters chortled at their tremendous wit. Chiun could also hear Remo, but the old Master of Sinanju ignored all of them.

  A damn good thing, thought Remo, after their near miss with trouble in Westwego. Cuvier's old friend had smiled at Chiun and cranked the volume up a notch, apparently believing it would help the old man understand what he was saying. More specifically, the redneck said that he had never rented to Vietnamese before, although he heard they did some righteous shrimping on the Gulf, and he didn't believe in holding folks responsible for what had happened in the war.

  Chiun had been examining the combination rental shop and bait shack with the keen eye of a demolition engineer-preparing to dismantle it by hand, one sagging timber at a time-when Remo managed to dissuade him.

  Remo was surprised at Chiun's tolerance, but it was just a matter of time until some lippy local yokels encountered the casual wrath of the Master of Sinanju.

  "Do you think they'll help?"

  He had sensed Aurelia arrive at his elbow, and it wasn't a bad sensation at all. She was close enough to touch, if either one of them was so inclined.

  "He seems to think so. I'm reserving judgment."

  "I think you will find what you are looking for," Aurelia said.

  "And what about yourself?" he asked.

  "I must be done with this before I can rejoin my people," she replied.

  "That's it?"

  Aurelia frowned at him and said, "What else?" He was distracted from the question by the sound of Cuvier returning, boot heels clomping on the wooden pier. The cabin cruiser shuddered as the Cajun landed aboard.

  "So, what's the word?" asked Remo.

  "Word is," Cuvier replied, "we got ourselves a loup-garou."

  MERLE BETTENCOURT was feeling more uneasy by the minute as the day wore on. He kept expecting one of those collect calls from Atlanta, and he didn't have a clue what he would tell Armand about the previous night's screwup on Tchoupitoulas Street.

  Armand ought to take the blame himself. He insisted they have old Leon and his bowwows handle it, as much because Leon already had the contract, cash up front, as from Armand's desire to see his enemies destroyed by something from Friday Night Fright Theater.

  Instead of good news in the paper this morning, Bettencourt was looking at a report of several wolves that had been killed on Tchoupitoulas Street and several dead and wounded Mardi Gras revelers.

  The night clerk at Desire House told reporters and police that he had three guests missing in the wake of what appeared to be some weird, destructive prank. The police were interested in the absent strangers-two white men and "one old Chinaman," the night clerk said-in an effort to clear up the matter of the wolves. No mention of Jean Cuvier by name. The white men had been registered as Remo Gillman and Alex Holland, the Chinaman as Kim Ho Sun.

  Damn comedians.

  Merle's fury, generated by the fi
rst reports from Tchoupitoulas Street, had settled down enough that he could think straight and focus on his problem rather than his rage.

  Leon had to go. That much was obvious, and Bettencourt no longer cared what Armand thought about his so-called loup-garou. The hairy bastard was a menace, flubbing vital contracts, leaving dead wolves as his calling card. Merle didn't intend to let the cops take Leon, wouldn't see the wolf man turn and rat him out, as others had betrayed Armand.

  Before he took off on a wolf hunt, though, there was another problem to deal with. In the past two hours there had been three phone calls to his office, each describing a peculiar foursome headed for the bayou country southwest of New Orleans. Two white men, some kind of Oriental and a woman dressed in Gypsy clothes. Merle didn't know what that was all about, but he recalled Leon's recent hassle with the Gypsies near Westwego and assumed the woman was now mixed up with Cuvier and his bodyguards somehow.

  The foursome had acquired a boat, and they were well into the back country by now. His spotters had them moving roughly south-southwest. Even though they traveled on the water, it would be no great challenge for a team of swamp-bred Cajuns to track them. Nip their little half-assed expedition in the bud.

  Merle had already picked the shooters he would use, the same boys he should have sent the previous night to Tchoupitoulas Street. A six-man team was overkill, no doubt about it, but he wanted no more screwups, nothing to make Armand think he couldn't handle it. If this petition for a new trial made the grade, and Armand walked because the feds were suddenly bereft of witnesses, Merle knew he would be set for life.

  Leon was history. He simply didn't know it yet. That shaggy freak had seen his last full moon.

  THE HUNTING PARTY was assembled on a private dock on the outskirts of Westwego. Four limousines had come and gone, depositing their passengers and cargo: backpacks and camping gear from L.L. Bean, long guns in hand-tooled leather cases from Abercrombie ur of the six men standing on the dock wore tailored camouflage, including long-billed caps, and heavy boots designed for rugged wear. Each of the four wore Ray-Ban sunglasses, carried long survival knives and shiny semiauto-matic pistols, either on the hip or slung under one arm. They smoked cigars and laughed politely at one another's jokes.