New York wasn’t home, but I didn’t feel the need to share that with him. “We go where we need to,” I said, trying to keep it formal.
“I think talking to me is going to be a waste of your time, but I’ll answer whatever you’d like,” he said, extending his long arm toward the booth we’d just left. “I am at your disposal.”
“We won’t take up too much of your time,” Holloway said.
I blinked beneath my glasses. That was a neat trick; Warrington had just offered us as much time as we wanted or needed and Holloway had immediately demurred and said we wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t decide whether Holloway had been prompted to reassure him because he was in a position of power, or Holloway was just generally polite to people who weren’t me.
“I think we’ve got a basic statement of events from the NOPD and Louisiana State Police,” I said, “but maybe you can fill us in real quick on what happened. From your perspective.”
“I was about to give a speech,” he said, smiling, “reopening the Algiers Ferry at the low, low price of zero dollars per ride, and I remembered I’d forgotten one of my cards. And by remembered, I mean flipped the card before it and realized there was a major gap in what I was about to say. So, I stepped over to Ms. Corcoran to get that card and something whizzed by like an angry hornet about two inches from my head.” He made a face. “Took me a second to realize what it was, and by the time I heard the shot, the troopers over there were hustling me out of there and to the car.”
“Can you think of any reason someone would want to kill you?” I asked, mentally trying to find any inconsistency between what Warrington had said and the story I’d heard from Shaw back in New York or Detective Parsons’s version of events. I couldn’t think of any, though I’d read the witness statement later just to be sure. Any inconsistencies might hint at Warrington lying, which wouldn’t exactly be shocking coming from a politician. After all, it was possible he’d staged the attempt for sympathy or something.
“Was there any reason for someone to go and kill Abraham Lincoln or JFK or Martin Luther King, Jr.?” Warrington’s smile didn’t waver a bit.
“Sure,” I said, ticking them off on my fingers. “Anger over losing the Civil War, craziness and Communism, and racism, respectively.”
Holloway raised an eyebrow, looking at me out of my peripheral vision. “You’re going to put Lee Harvey Oswald onto Communism?”
“He defected to the Soviet Union and then Cuba,” I said, not breaking off from watching Warrington, who never stopped smiling in the midst of all that. It looked natural, too. “To dismiss that as any kind of a factor seems a little strange, given that we were in the depths of the Cold War and it was an epic struggle that he’d already declared his loyalties on—twice. But notice I also said he was crazy.”
“I did notice that,” Warrington said smoothly. “Very charitable, I thought.” He paused, steepling his fingers before him. “I can’t think of anything I’ve done that would warrant that level of hostility, but I suppose, as you just ably pointed out, crazy could be a motive.”
“Crazy is a motive less of the time than you’d think,” I said. “But I do find it interesting you compared yourself to those three—all of whom died—rather than, say, Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan or John Paul II. You know, ones who lived. Like you think of yourself as a martyr.”
Warrington’s smile never missed a beat. “I prefer to think of myself as a visionary, someone who could help change things for the better. You know how I got my start?”
I shrugged. “I assumed that, like all politicians, you started out sponging and sucking off whoever would pay for it at the roughest corner in town.”
“Ooh, that cynicism.” He kept smiling, but Holloway looked like he was about explode in my peripheral vision. Yeah, I was still keeping a watchful eye on him. “Ms. Nealon, I must say—you do me wrong, there. I started out as a Metropolitan Council Member in Baton Rouge. One of the youngest ever elected to that office—”
“You started whoring early, then.”
Holloway dropped another shade of red, started to grab my arm, but apparently thought the better of it. “This is the governor of Louisiana you’re talking to. I know you don’t have an ounce of respect for anyone on the damned planet—”
“I have plenty of respect for lots of people on the planet,” I said, still looking at both of them from behind my shades, “just not anyone at this table.”
Holloway fell silent, but looked like he was about to launch off like a nuclear missile. Almost exactly, in fact, I can say, having seen several of them launch.
Warrington just chuckled like I hadn’t called him the cheapest whore in whoretown. “That’s a common enough misperception about politics and politicians, and I don’t blame you a bit for thinking it. I’m guessing you haven’t a lot of dealings with…well, us.”
“I lived with one for a while,” I said, and Holloway’s frown deepened. I did not elaborate, for obvious reasons.
“Oh, so it’s personal, is it?” Warrington’s chuckle deepened. “Can’t blame you for that, either, but I wish you’d drop that practiced cynicism you wear like a suit of armor and really look at what we—meaning my administration—are trying to do down here. Louisiana currently ranks 46th in education across the entire US. I mean to bring us up—modest goals, at first, but I want to create a workforce for the 21st century that attracts the best companies—tech, manufacturing, hell, even Silicon Valley startups if I can—to come on down here and hire Lousianans. Education’s key to that, which is why the bill I signed last year provides more money for schools in underprivileged areas, including rural as well as urban—”
“Ughhhhhhhh,” I said, making a deep, guttural sound as I threw my head back. “You and Corcoran have this curious disease where you think I give a damn about your political accomplishments. Knock it off, please. You’re not campaigning with me. Or Holloway, probably, though who knows where he’s from.”
“Ohio,” Holloway muttered.
“That explains a lot,” I said. “If you want to help us—and by extension, save your own life—tell me why someone would want to kill you over that education bill.”
“I don’t understand why anyone would.” Warrington smirked his way through the answer. “It provides—”
I thumped my head against the table. “Enough. With. The. Talking. Points. Bullshit!” I lifted it back up. “Did anyone oppose your inscribed-by-God-on-stone-tablets-before-being-handed-down-to-you-by-His-own-hand education bill?”
Warrington actually blinked, though his reaction to my feigned hysterics was much more muted than any normal person’s—including the spectators in the chicken joint. “Of course,” he said softly.
“Why?” I asked.
“I assume because they hate the poor and the disadvantaged—”
“Oh, for crying out loud.” I slammed a fist against the table. “You know I’m a cynic, and you still come at me with this propaganda? Give me the real reasons, not the horse crap you say in the press to dismiss anyone who disagrees with you.”
“Okay, okay.” Warrington motioned me to quiet down, then looked behind him, waved at a constituent being gently moved back by a bodyguard, then lowered his voice to a level where even Holloway probably couldn’t hear it. “It blew up the state budget.” He cleared his throat, then spoke again, maybe even lower. “By a lot.”
“Thank you,” I said. “And what did you cut to pay for it?”
“Stuff.” Warrington let out a chuckle. Holloway was leaning in hard, trying to catch what he was saying, though how much luck he was having, I couldn’t be sure. The governor was talking extremely low—not meta-low, which would have told me something interesting about him, confirming that latent suspicion worming its way around the back of my mind—but exceedingly quietly given the background noise in Willie’s. “And more stuff.”
“Nice,” I said. “Mind having Ms. Corcoran give me a line-item on that? For our big brains back in Washington to look over?”
“Sure,” he said, and motioned Jenna Corcoran over. “Would you mind emailing Ms. Nealon a link to the state budget and—” he looked around again, beckoning her closer before whispering, “—and giving her a detailed look at what we, uh, moved around, to pay for the education bill.”
Corcoran stiffened, but nodded, giving me a very pointed look. “Right away.”
“Thank you.” Warrington smiled at her. “Anything else, Ms. Nealon?”
“If you had to steelman an argument against your own education bill,” I said, looking him right in the eyes, “how would you do it?”
“‘Steelman’?” Holloway piped up. “What does that even mean?”
“It’s the opposite of a strawman argument,” I said. “It’s when you take a position against your own and argue it with full force. In this case, I’m asking the governor if he can play devil’s advocate and say why his opponents might have voted against his beloved, holy, on-a-mission-from-heaven bill so I can see why—other than because they hate all the poor people, ever—they might have been against it.”
“I told you, budgetary reasons,” Warrington said. “Everyone’s against pork barrel spending, until theirs gets blown out in the budgetary process. Because then what are you going to tell your constituents you’ve done for them come re-election time? We have a house and senate mid-term going on right now.” He chuckled. “Ought to be a barn-burner, too.” He stood, fastening his suit buttons as he did so. “Ms. Nealon—a pleasure. Agent Holloway. Please feel free to contact me if you need anything else.” He nodded, and off he went, state police bodyguards trailing behind as he walked out of Willie’s.
“I’m normally not Miss Manners, by any means,” Holloway said, apoplectic the moment Warrington was out the door, “but can you not be nice to anyone?”
“Yes,” I said. “It depends on the audience. Like I told you, it was the people at the table that were the problem.”
“Yeah, you’re definitely not the problem.” He gave me a light shove and I stood up, leaving the booth so he could get out. “I had a bad feeling about you from the beginning, Nealon, but this is just confirming everything Shaw and I thought about you—reckless, loose cannon—”
“My cannon is totally tied down,” I said, “as you can tell by no one getting actually blasted yet.”
“No one got blasted?” He threw a hand toward the door the governor had just walked out of. “What the hell do you call that?”
“A hard interview for an obvious liar,” I said. “There’s stuff he’s not telling us.”
Holloway put a hand on my shoulder, but must have seen the freezing glare I shot his hand even through my sunglasses, because he removed it immediately. “Of course there’s stuff he’s not telling us. He’s a politician. Of course he’s a liar. See above. But that doesn’t give us license to go stomping on his feet. You may think you’re invincible, but I’m not, and neither is my career. I get that you don’t give a shit about being with the bureau long-term, but pissing off a power player like Warrington is a bad move. He’s going to be in Washington in a few years, mark my words, and when he shows up, you don’t want to be on his bad side if you’re still in the agency.” Holloway snorted. “Guessing you’re not caring that far ahead, though.”
“Nope,” I said, and headed for the exit. As I started to reach for the door, an Asian lady with perfect, coal-black hair pulled into a tight ponytail beat me to it, holding it open for me as she slipped ahead.
“Sorry,” she said, a little too brightly, her eyes on me. I gave her a quick once-over from behind my sunglasses. She was pretty, perfect skin, about my height, a lot thinner, had a look about her that screamed ‘mom’ from the ponytail down to the yoga pants.
I hesitated, and she brushed my hand as I passed. Something stiff popped into it, something like a business card, and I held onto it without evincing any reaction. I made my way onto the sidewalk, glancing back at her in the process. She bustled past me to a waiting minivan, not a thing in her hands now that she’d brush-passed (to use spy lingo) the card to me.
“Where the hell is Burkitt?” Holloway asked, scouring the street. Once he was looking away from me, I looked at the card in my hand.
It was for a massage parlor somewhere on Canal Street. A hand-written note told me to “Ask for Michelle.”
Burkitt pulled to a stop in front of us, and I made it to the passenger door before Holloway could, earning me another glare and muttered curse. “Too slow, normie,” I said, slipping in while he was grousing. I flashed the card to Burkitt while Holloway got in the back. “Ever heard of this place?”
I thought the FBI agent was going to choke on his own tongue, and he might have if his jaw hadn’t dropped it out of swallowing range when he saw it. “Where’d you get that?”
“An Asian lady handed it to me as I was coming out of there,” I said. “Why?”
He stared at the card. “Does that say…?”
“‘Ask for Michelle,’ yeah.” I glanced back to see Holloway taking an interest in our conversation. “That significant?”
Burkitt cleared his throat, picking his jaw up off the floor mat. “I’d say so, yeah.” He put the big SUV in gear, and the smooth roar of the engine suggested he’d accidentally goosed it a little much in his surprise, because he throttled back fast. “That’s a front for the local Triads. You know, Chinese mafia. And Michelle?” He shook his head. “Probably Michelle Cheong.” He swallowed, all serious. “She’s the head of the local family.”
“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said, looking at the card and the hand-written note.
“Why is the local Triad queen trying to contact you while you’re here to investigate an assassination attempt on the governor?” This came from Holloway, who sounded as confused about the whole thing as I was.
“I don’t know,” I said, pocketing the card. “But I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
18.
The sign above Michelle Cheong’s Triad HQ just read “Massage Parlor,” like it was the only one in the city. About a block from the hotel where the assassin had taken their shot and two or three blocks from where the governor had been speaking at the time, it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility that this Michelle Cheong had actual information to contribute to the investigation.
But the place had a slightly worn look, like a few of the businesses here on Canal Street did. Canal Street seemed to me like a cross between Fifth Avenue in New York and a local touristy, seedy district. The big brand names were clearly gussied up to be on par with their counterparts in other major cities. These places were polished, signs lit up in the twilight.
Then next to them would be some tourist trap shop selling New Orleans hats and Saints merchandise, looking like everything in the place had fallen off a truck yesterday, stuffed into shelves that might have been brought in remaindered from a K-Mart that had closed in the wake of Katrina.
“Just drop me here,” I said as Burkitt brought us to a stop off the curb just outside the massage parlor.
Holloway started to get out with me but encountered difficulty with the child lock. “What the hell, Burkitt?”
“I have a three- and six-year-old,” Burkitt said, getting out to open it since I was showing no sign of doing so.
“Stay here,” I said, halting him. “If she wanted a crew, she’d have handed me the card in the open, or given it to you, Holloway.”
“You want to go into a Triad front without backup?” Holloway asked, like I’d just told him I was going to Mars without an oxygen tank. He finally shrugged. “Your funeral, I guess.”
I looked the parlor over. It looked padded, with comfort-first versions of cots spread out inside with a dozen or so Chinese workers massaging the ankles and shoulders of customers that had come in off the street. A pitch man sat on a stool out front, saying, “You want a massage? 15 minutes, $20,” to everyone that passed. A sign indicating longer massages for higher prices laid out the arrangement pretty clearly for anyone
that either missed the hawker’s pitch or wanted more than he advertised.
“The hell?” Holloway looked like he was ready to crawl between the front seats to join me. “You’re actually going to get a massage, aren’t you?”
“And accidentally take the soul of whoever got stuck working on me? Probably not,” I said, closing the door. I heard him mutter something, muffled, through the vehicle’s aluminum body about needing some work done on himself. I would have agreed and suggested he start with an enema to flush his head out of his ass, but didn’t feel like making a scene by shouting it in the middle of Canal Street. “Wait for me,” I told Burkitt again, and he nodded, slipping around the front of his vehicle to stand on the sidewalk.
The pitchman on the stool evinced no sign of recognizing me as I walked up, a rare surprise. “You want a massage?” he asked, sounding a little like he was delighted at having snagged another prospect.
“I’m here to see Michelle,” I said, handing him the card. He took one look at it and started to pocket it. “Nuh uh,” I said, and he handed it back. I put it back in my jacket, leaving it unfastened when I finished, my gun easily accessible for a draw. Holloway had been a little paranoid in my estimation, but he wasn’t wrong; I was walking into the Triads’ New Orleans front, and I was not going to do that like a lamb walking into a lion’s den. Not that I was ever a lamb if I could avoid it.
The massage parlor had a nice, sandalwood incense scent, but the white paint on the walls was fading and matched the storefront for its lack of glory. Calling the parlor a hole in the wall would have been a disservice to holes in the wall, especially those hole-in-the-wall-type restaurants where you could find really good food and decent décor hidden behind a rough-looking facade.
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