by John Farrow
“Yeah, Sarge?” Everett asked.
“I want a man on every floor,” Dupree advised him. “We’ll be room-to-room and I don’t want movement without our knowledge. Officers in each stairwell and make sure they stay alert. I’m sitting on the first man who yawns. Make sure they get the message.”
“Yes, sir. Room-to-room, sir?”
“Matching teams. One starts at the bottom and works up, the other goes top down. Empty rooms first. Get a list. If nothing shows up, then we start waking up guests. I’ll get that permission.”
“Dupree,” Cinq-Mars interrupted.
“Yeah?”
“Some people—anyone tailing me—might know that it’s empty. But the daytime staff hasn’t had time to make it up, so it definitely won’t get rented out to a late arrival. Anyone who knew where I used to be knows that. My old room.”
Detective Dupree agreed that it was worth checking on. “Everett, first thing, get me two uniforms and a security guy with a master key. Émile, y’all might as well come with us on this one.”
He was hoping he’d say that, even though he knew that, in Dupree’s eyes, he remained a possible perpetrator.
They ascended to the seventeenth floor.
The room was not far from the elevator doors and one uniform took up position on the far side and the other was preparing to knock when Dupree stopped him. “Don’t knock,” he said.
“Sir?”
“The room’s supposed to be empty. We’re with hotel staff. We’re legal. They’re just showing us an empty room.”
Like his boss in Security, this guy was also Spanish-speaking. He unlocked the door with his master and held it open an inch for Dupree to proceed. Then he stepped back out of the way, afraid of possible flying bullets. Dupree went through, then the uniforms, and finally Émile Cinq-Mars.
An empty room. The bathroom was vacant. The bed remained as Émile had left it earlier, the sheets crumpled, the pillows indented from the nap Émile had taken with Sandra before dinner. Émile looked at the bed and wondered if he’d ever make love to his wife again.
“Okay, well,” Dupree stated, “it wasn’t a bad try.”
A uniform opened a closet door. Then jumped back.
Out tumbled the body of a man, hands tied behind his back.
“Shit!” For a heavy man, Dupree was swift when it suited him. He jumped so fast that he almost caught the dead man, who’d been propped up in a seated position, before his shoulders hit the floor. Almost, but not quite. Cinq-Mars moved over him and the two senior cops looked at each other.
“Africa,” Dupree said, “with islands to the south.”
“Now will you tell me his name?” Cinq-Mars asked.
“Grant,” Dupree told him. “Jefferson Grant.”
“Tell me about his hands,” Cinq-Mars asked.
Dupree had to pull him further forward and lean over him to peer at his hands. “Tied,” he said. Then he struggled back to his feet and looked at Cinq-Mars again. “With the ring finger of his left hand dismembered. No doubt missing.”
“Was he a married man?”
“I’m not familiar with his personal life.”
“Dupree,” Cinq-Mars said, “listen to me. My wife is in the building.”
“We’ll do an all-room search,” the New Orleans detective vowed. “Regardless of what’s occupied.”
“I don’t know if we can allow that,” the security man said.
“Okay. So why don’t y’all try to stop me?” Dupree challenged, then said, “Give me that.” He snatched the man’s master door pass from his fingers. “Thanks.”
Dupree called for his man Everett, who came over. Every request made of his subordinate had been taken care of, and perhaps he knew that, but he went through the list to make sure. They needed a forensics team for this murder. He wanted the victim’s phone checked for calls, texts, and emails, “Find out if he tweets,” and he wanted a warrant to visit his office, if he had one, and his home. “Find out about next of kin.”
“On it, boss.”
“Now get everybody out of this room who doesn’t have to be here. Where the hell is Everardo Flores?”
“Who?”
“The Head of Security.”
“On his way, so the story goes.”
“When he gets here, make sure he finds me. Émile!” Dupree barked. “You’re coming with me. Security!”
“Yes, sir?” one of the hotel guys responded.
“Do you got an empty room on this floor?”
“A few, yeah. There’s this one.”
“This one’s a crime scene! Give me a number.”
The man checked his list. “1712.”
He told the man he called Everett, “That’s where I’ll be.” He told the security guy, “Let me in there,” And he repeated to Cinq-Mars, “With me. Come on along.”
Émile was again impressed by how well this big man moved when he was possessed to do so. He carried his weight like a cartoon hippopotamus in ballet slippers. The two went into the vacant room and Dupree left the overhead lights off but clicked on a floor lamp, which cast a moody glow. Dupree sat down on one of the two beds, and Cinq-Mars, not really sure what this was all about, turned around a desk chair and sat on that. He welcomed the hardness of the chair’s back.
“Understand,” Dupree told him, his tone quiet, yet aggressive, “that this doesn’t change a thing. Fact is, you’re more a suspect than ever.”
Cinq-Mars raised no objection. “I agree,” he told him calmly. “It’s like I knew where the body was. But it was deductive reasoning, Sergeant, though I can see where you might want to consider that I had prior knowledge.”
“Take your deductive reasoning and shove it up your pink ass, all right? I have no choice here but to take you at your word. I am doing so for one reason only. Your wife’s life may be at stake. So that’s the premise I’m operating on. For now. Until we find her. And we will find her. If y’all know where she is, if y’all left her somewhere, might as well tell me now, because lying about it will surely piss me off something fierce sometime in the near future.”
Cinq-Mars choose not to reply, and the question died in midair.
“All right then. This spins around you. Pickpockets in the lobby. Pickpockets in your hotel room. Jefferson Grant tailing y’all. Jefferson Grant dead in your old room. So this spins around you, but I don’t know why. If y’all do, you’re not telling.”
“You know what I know, Dupree.”
“Don’t call me Dupree. That’s been rescinded. Y’all will address me as Sergeant Dupree or I will fucking have y’all arrested right now.”
“Fine, Sergeant Dupree. But we don’t have time for games. I don’t care what you think of me or do with me, but find my wife. Please. Now.”
The New Orleans detective relaxed a fraction. As he adjusted his considerable weight, the bedsprings squeaked. “As I was saying, this revolves around you. Y’all contend that you don’t know much. So I want you to find out more. Call your man in the FBI. Tell him the story. Convince him to tell y’all anything further that might help. Get him to step up, Émile. Because we don’t have much else to go on here.”
True, they were foundering in the dark, and the slightest lead had to be followed to see if it led to light. Besides, it gave him something to do and that might help quell his high anxiety, undermine his imagination when it came to fearing the worst about Sandra. He knew it also took him out of Dupree’s way, which might be the idea, but he understood the value in that as well. “All right, Sergeant Dupree,” he said. “I’ll do that.”
“Report back to me if you get anything, Mr. Cinq-Mars.”
So they were no longer on a first-name basis, and Dupree’s pronunciation sounded more like Saink Mart. Close enough.
THIRTEEN
He had lived within a code. Both sides—multiple sides, at times—lived by that code. On occasion, a new group emerged and refused to be put down. Russian gangs came close to the top of the heap for a time, then t
he Jamaicans threatened the balance as the Mafia descended and the Irish West Enders persevered and the biker gangs fiercely held their turf. The old Mafia power slid away, then reinvigorated itself again, then remained a niche group, corrupting city officials and intimidating contractors to stay rich. Newer arrivals always spotted opportunity in abandoning the code. Power derived from proving themselves as more brutal, more terrifying. And yet, over time, they conformed. In violating an unwritten, unspoken code, all retribution brought down upon them was deemed justifiable. And so the code returned, and prevailed.
Certain strategies wandered off-limits. When the Hells Angels chose to kill prison guards, new money was allocated for law enforcement. More than a hundred and fifty Hells went to prison for a variety of crimes, and so the code was restored. Lay off prison guards became the most recent addition to the code. In his city, over the past century, killing a police officer brought out the hounds. No cop-killer could expect a peaceable sleep as long as he remained at large. Hope for a good night’s rest depended upon incarceration. Lay off cops, that had always been the first commandment of the code.
Other limits and observances applied. Cinq-Mars recalled the poor lad shot umpteen times behind the wheel of his Honda Accord. An ambulance arrived on the double and the young man survived, but how to secure his safety during his convalescence in the hospital? Cops guarded the operating room. As the matter turned out, there was no need. Before the young man was off the table a call came in from a gang spokesman. They had shot the wrong guy. Same kind of car, a blue two-door, but the wrong one. Owners of such cars laid low, but the boy was able to recuperate without fear of being hunted. The bad guys had simply admitted to their mistake, so life went on.
The code held to its own skewed sense of honor.
Back home, spouses and other family members of cops and of criminals, both, were off limits.
True, Colombian thugs who were upping the ante of their underworld influence had to have it explained to them that threatening the wives and children of judges and top cops might gain them a momentary victory, but a simple truth remained: cops came into contact with very bad men everyday and negotiated with them every single day, and if a cornered killer was offered a deal—to blow up the family sedan of a Colombian associate, for instance, to retaliate for a cop’s missing child—the proposition would be accepted in the wink of an eye. So through all times and all manner of malfeasance the code prevailed.
Once, that he could remember, Émile armed his wife with a rifle, although the actual count was twice if he thought about it more thoroughly. Sandra was a capable shot, which they both put down to her American upbringing, and yet she never needed to fire her weapon in anger. Just prepare to do so. Either good luck or the code prevailed, she was spared being a party to violence, but down here in New Orleans, what code existed? Even if one did exist, how did it include him? What pact had he made with local devils that he could call upon them to keep his wife alive and unharmed? In a city once ravaged by storm, where the destitute victimized by ferocious wind and rain and by the collapse of levees—which were inadequately engineered and no warning was given that they might not hold—and where the only crime attributed to those people was that they were too poor to flee and were consequently fired upon and two of them shot dead—not by looters, not by warring gangs, not by manic throngs of frightened or disoriented people like themselves, but by the very men charged to protect them—in an environment such as that, who would help him rescue his wife? Moreover, what criminal entity could be prevailed upon to spare the woman they held captive?
Back home, a bad guy might be convinced that he had good reason to do so. Certain countervailing threats might apply. In some circumstances, contacts and connections could be called upon, deals struck. But here?
Why would any killer bother to be merciful here?
Émile called back to Montreal, to his former partner, Bill Mathers. He still wasn’t used to the technology that allowed people to know who was calling before they answered, even though he carried that technology in his own pocket.
“Are you out partying, Émile? I’ve been asleep awhile.”
For a split second he wondered if the night’s terror had affected the sound of his voice. Even his ability to speak. “Bill, Sandra’s been taken.”
“Taken?”
“Kidnapped.”
“Émile! What! Why? How did this happen?”
He plowed through these and other demands for details, all perfectly natural, shaking them off, to get to the nub of the matter. “Listen, Bill, I don’t have time right now—”
“I’m flying down there.”
“The hell you are.”
“I am! I’ll be on the next flight out.”
“No offense, Bill, but there’s nothing you can do to help. There’s nothing I can do. I’m calling for one reason only. I didn’t bring his coordinates with me. I need to get in touch with Rand Dreher, ASAP.”
“Do you have a pen? I’ll dig up the number in a second. But I’m going to call him myself and get him to call you.”
“Why do that, Bill? I’ll call him. Save a step.”
“And if he’s not in? You’ll end up calling him back endlessly. I’ll do that. Okay, here’s the number.”
Cinq-Mars wrote it down and also agreed to allow Mathers to call Agent Dreher first. He negotiated that agreement by first getting Mathers to forget about coming down to New Orleans himself.
“You know you’re not my boss anymore, right?” Mathers argued.
“Maybe not, but I’m still the voice of reason. Stay put, Bill. Look, I may need you there. You might be able to run some things for me as they come up. Down here, you’re just another tourist. Like me.”
Mathers consented and urged Cinq-Mars to take care before he signed off.
Émile hated every second that ticked by, and yet was surprised when Agent Dreher called him back within two minutes.
“My God, Émile. I can’t believe this.”
“Believe it.”
“I’m stunned. I’m just so sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
“You can start by telling me what you don’t want to tell me.” Cinq-Mars didn’t expect an honest reply. Water torture. If he could maintain the drip, sooner or later Dreher might yield.
“There’s nothing I can tell you, Émile, that will be of any use.”
“Never ask yourself, Dreher, why people hate law enforcement.” He could feel his instincts taking over. Old habits, old talents, intended to keep his counterpart off-guard and unstable. “Was he one of yours?”
“Who? What?” Like Mathers, he had probably just been roused from sleep.
“The man with the pale pigment splotches on his face. Jefferson Grant. Some kind of half-assed private eye. Was he one of yours?”
“Why? What did he do?”
“That sounds like an admission to me. Is it?”
“What did he do?”
“He’s dead.”
“Émile. God. What the hell’s going on down there? How’d that happen?”
“Looks like a spike wound through the heart and a finger cut off. Ring any bells? Again with the missing finger. I don’t want my wife’s to be next, Dreher.” The way he said the man’s name carried threat and vitriol.
“Okay. Émile. Okay. Take it easy. He was working for me.”
“So he was spying on us.”
“Not spying. Protecting.”
“Yeah, well, he just gave his life to the cause. But from what I hear he wasn’t the type. Couldn’t you post one of your own agents, instead of some shabby ex-cop?”
“I never thought it would come to this. If I had I wouldn’t have let you go down there. But putting one of my own on the job—they’d ask too many questions. Émile, honest, I didn’t think there was any real danger.”
“You were definitely wrong about that, Dreher.”
“Call me Rand.”
“I don’t care what your name is! I’ll call you Mr. Asshole if I’m in
the mood. Your man is dead. How’s that for danger? As for questions, I have a few. Who did I need to be protected from that you hired him in the first place? By itself, that shows you thought this was dangerous. What aren’t you telling me, Dreher?”
He could hear the other man take a breath and sensed him formulating a response. “Émile, it’s nothing sinister. You’re unofficial. You went down there to ask questions about a cold case. Who might come out of the shadows for something like that? I just—if you got into trouble, I wanted to be alerted and to have somebody in place to help you out. That’s all. Somebody who knows the ropes on both sides of the fence. New Orleans is not an easy jurisdiction to be working in.”
So he was being thoughtful. At least, that’s what he wanted him to believe. Cinq-Mars was standing now, gazing out the window at the peaceful city lights flickering below. He felt that yawning gap of darkness between himself, from this height, and the softly illuminated streets below, this black abyss, into which his wife had vanished. He felt the floor, the ground, the whole of the earth, side-slipping out from under his feet, himself falling into a despair, an oblivion, he’d never known.
“Apparently, Dreher, you know whom to call down here, to pull up a low life like Grant.”
“I had advice.”
“So make more calls. Kidnapping’s a federal offense, no? The local police are doing a thorough job, I’m impressed so far, but we don’t know where this leads.”
“I’ll get help to you, Émile.”
“I want top people. Fuck the budget. Can you do that?”
“Consider them on their way.”
“Send the cavalry.”
“You’re at the hotel? They’ll be there.”
“Yeah,” Cinq-Mars said, “the hotel. Dreher, top people. Do you need an incentive? Think about this. I’m no longer a cop. I’m no longer bound by confidences and secrecy. My wife knows everything that I know about this case.”
The pause at the other end felt weighted, even accusatory. Cinq-Mars knew why. One way to keep a spouse safe was to make damn sure they knew nothing. In that sense, he had screwed up, but Dreher wasn’t going to say so under these circumstances.