The Right Wrong Number: An Ed Earl Burch Novel

by Jim Nesbitt

  Louis slipped the watch out of his pocket, popping the catch of the cover and squinting through the glare that rocketed off its glass face. He was cutting it close to make his next appointment, but that one would keep. The man was patient and professional. His last bit of business wouldn’t. Now that poor bastard was in a hurry, rushing into that bar on Decatur, the place where his Ray-Bans weren’t carelessly left next to the watery remains of a bourbon and soda, pushing him for his cut on that Houston business, pushing him for the next bit of wet work, pushing him for a drink, pushing him for a connect on some Mex brown or some blow.

  “I don’t wanna press ya but some guys is pressin’ me. Picked some losers. Just wanna find out where y’at on the next bit of work. Got the bookies callin’ me. Don’t want one of your crew showin’ up with broken kneecaps, do ya?”

  He flashed the poor bastard his best smile, one that showed all his expensive denture wear and caused his cheeks to rise and partly cover his eyes like a pair of No Sale signs ringing up on an old-timey cash register. He donned his most soothing voice. The record started to spin. He started his slow waltz.

  “I gotta make a call, guy — your cut is someplace else. Pick me up in a half hour, corner of St. Louis and Decatur, and we’ll run get it. About the next deal, guy, I might have a line on that too. If I’m right, guy, I’ll need your help with some equipment we’ll need to stash.”

  “Great, Louis. Just great. Gettin’ short on my end. Gettin’ short in other ways too, you get my drift.” He pressed the side of his nose with a long forefinger.

  “I think I can help you there too, guy. Be patient. Go get your ride. Lemme make my call.”

  That poor bastard. All fast talk. Real friendly. None of that sullen shoulder-shrugging that almost earned a bullet to the brainpan on the Houston job. No hardass pose. Eager to please. Eager to get his money and a line on the next job. Hustling him so hard with so much single-minded purpose, with only his own agenda on his mind, leaning over like a homerun hitter thinking fastball, fastball, fastball. Never thinking of the curve or change up. Never thinking of the other man’s agenda.

  Which made it easier to spin the poor bastard out of the bar, then linger for another drink or two so no one would remember them sitting together. Which made it easier to get the poor bastard to drive him to an empty warehouse in Metarie, out off the Airline Highway, so he could drive that special pen spike of his just below the line of his skull, in that soft spot between the brainpan and the spinal column.

  Right hand gripping the face. Left hand darting quick and sure, popping the spike past the first line of resistant gristle. A twist then a flat hand to the butt of the handle to push the steel all the way home. A pop to free the handle from the spike. A grunt from the poor bastard, the sound of a man dumping last night’s dinner into the crapper. A click, then a grinding of molars as the poor bastard clenched his jaws in a death grimace, his life already over. A slow spin to the concrete floor of the warehouse.

  A quick drive back to the city, hoping the poor bastard’s sputtering Impala wouldn’t die on I-10. A fast wipe of the wheel and door handles. Keys in the ignition along an Esplanade curb — hello, joyriders, take this auto, please. A long walk to his Caddy for a short ride to his next appointment. So much for Bill, bald-headed coke whore, long-shot loser and second-string muscle. And an extra chunk of change for Jack — Bill’s cut.

  Just us. When he handed the envelope of cash to Jack, a look would pass between them, the type of look they had passed back and forth since school days in a tough neighborhood off the Irish Channel and through a joint stint at Angola. Just us. You and me. I lead, you follow. Jack was slow-witted — that helped him maintain unblinking composure when the pressure was on, when spade bull fruits tried to make Louis a punk and Jack calmly drove a shiv through the ribs of a very surprised and muscle-bound smoke named `Dozer Dick.

  But Jack wasn’t dumb — the windfall and the knowledge of how it came about would strengthen the bond between them. You and me. Just us. Remember that. And this was just where Louis wanted his best and steadiest muscle to always be. Tied to his side by just the right balance of fear, gratitude and the inertia of a timeworn relationship neither would break. Glad to be on his good side, wary of his sudden turns, but not so worried to consider a turn against him. Just us.

  He would need Jack for this next bit of business, solid and wired in. He would need an absolutely trustworthy backstop because he was about to move against some big people, people he worked for and knew well, people who always paid him well for the teams he put together for their special and nasty projects.

  They didn’t accept him as they did family or closer associates, but they did show the respect due a contract player who always executed his assigned duties with speed, economy and not the slightest trace of fly ash on the silk of their two-grand Versace suits or the polished lenses of their Wayfarers. They kept him at a distance bridged by subtle nods of the head, solemn handshakes in dark restaurants and the whispery electronics of wire transfers to a Caymans account.

  The thought. Just the thought of moving against these people. It gave him a chill of delight. A sliver of icy fear and joy, thin as a heroin needle, rode just above the semi-automatic that dug into his back. He smiled to himself, pleased at that private feeling only he knew was there, one that wouldn’t show on his face or in his eyes or handshake at this next meeting with a patient professional in a Versace suit.

  Cold air blasted from the Caddy’s vents, smoking condensation that froze the sweat in his shirt as he headed the black boat uptown, bumping behind the St. Charles trolley, heading toward the manicured lawns and dripping oaks of the Garden District, the home of New Orleans’ old-line silk-stocking set, the place where wealthy American newcomers settled when the French gave up control of La Louisiane, staking out territory separate from the Creoles of The Quarter.

  The missing Ray-Bans were on his head now; they had been waiting patiently on the grey leather of the Caddy’s front passenger seat, surprising him with their presence, causing a frown of worry to cross his brow. That wasn’t in the movie of his day’s movements — he still saw them sitting on a bar, next to a highball glass.

  That contradiction worried him. It meant the fear was fatter than the thin, cold spike he felt along his spine as he walked along Dauphine, big enough to knock him off stride and put images in his head that didn’t happen. He had to get on top of this, keep the fear as a small thing of pleasure and motivation, a reminder that he was about to make some deadly moves, but not something that screwed up his concentration and control.

  Well, guy, fear is only an old friend. Something to be savored. Like good bourbon with just enough soda to tingle the nose and throat and carry the sweet burn of whiskey up into the brain. Nothing that should cause your gears to lock up or your bowels to turn to water.

  Not you, guy. You hold your mud; it stays solid. You keep your main man close; he won’t turn. You do the deal — bigger than all the others. Just a taste of the fear needle, guy. Not enough to blow those chilly circuits that keep the mind icy and focused when maximum heat starts blowing its breath all around. And blow it will with these players, guy.

  He smiled and glided the Caddy into the white gravel lot of Papa Saulnier’s, a restaurant just off St. Charles with a name that promised a jolly Cajun as owner and chef, or maybe a sophisticated old-line Creole with a waxed moustache and a memory of when Arnaud’s was truly Arnaud’s.

  But the promise of white tablecloth, dark bentwood chairs and a French name in gentle brown script on a background of tasteful parchment didn’t extend past the dining room or the menu. The owners were two of the men in the Versace suits who gave him money, tight smiles and quick handshakes, brothers of a more southeasterly Mediterranean extraction. He was meeting one at a back table. The man would be sitting there, squared on the wooden oval of a cafe chair, leaning forward, a deep-water tan below a thick mane of white, razor-cut hair, elegantly tailored elbows on either side of a cup of cof
fee and an ashtray with a cigarette curling a white line of smoke toward the ceiling.

  Louis gave himself a little taste of the needle as he walked up, registering a satisfied jolt because his expectations were met by the reality of the suit’s table pose, tingling his spine with an illicit droplet of primal feeling, meeting the man with a firm handshake as he rose from the cafe seat, whipping off the Ray-Bans to lock eyes with the suit, holding the gaze steady and clear until the man found what he was looking for — loyalty, greed, murder, intelligence, a winning Lotto number — nodded briskly and gestured toward the empty seat on the opposite side of the table. The Third Eye was in high gear, recording every shooting of the cuffs, every smoothing of the tie, every elaborate swirl and swoosh of a heavy-ringed hand as the suit brought the cigarette to his lips.

  The Eye caught Louis nodding to a waiter with pomaded hair the color of iron filings, knowing the short-jacketed servant would bring him the same cup of coffee as the suit and a second ashtray for his cigarette; it saw him smooth his hair and make a small, smiling apology for his sweaty appearance and his slight tardiness. A nice touch, this last move — it let the suit see him sweat and firmly placed him where the suit wanted him to be, below the salt, a murderous blue-collar hod carrier coming to kiss the bossman’s ring and get his next set of instructions.

  The suit waved a hand through exhaled smoke.

  “Think nothing of it — you been out in this damned heat, making your rounds. Like a Turkish bath out there, I know. Ruins the shit outta good clothes like you got on. Oughta just wear a fuckin’ loincloth or a toga in heat like this. I was out in it earlier and had to change shirts when I come in. Chilly as shit, lemme tell you. Give a man Vegas throat like that.”

  A snap of the fingers. A smile on the faces of both men. The waiter stepped up.

  “Ice water for Louis, Rene. He needs to cool down.`Less you want somethin’ stronger.”

  Louis shook his head. The suit nodded. Louis fired up a Camel Wide and shot the smoke through his nostrils, leaning back to ease a kink in his shoulders, then sitting straight and attentive, matching the suit’s silence. Two men smoking at a table, waiting for the waiter’s bustle to be done so they could conduct their quiet business.

  The suit leaned forward again, signaling the end of the prologue, but not necessarily the end of ceremony. It was the true start of their meet, complete with full-dress flattery on a gilt-lettered scroll. The suit’s words cut under exhaled smoke.

  “You showed the right touch in Houston, Louis, and we appreciate it. Not your normal job, right? But handled like a pro, like always. That’s why we like workin’ with you. Things get done right. We try to show our appreciation in long green, but we want you to know it goes beyond the cash transaction. We appreciate talent. We appreciate what you bring to the table and want you to know that.”

  Louis looked down at the tabletop, feigning embarrassment, forcing a small smile to cross his lips.

  “You give me too much credit. Houston was a simple thing. I trust it gave you the top cover you needed.”

  The suit nodded, taking a sip of coffee.

  “It did, Louis. More than. Kept the cops lookin’ the wrong way while a certain friend of ours tied up some loose ends for us. Let him get the hell out of the country while the cops were runnin’ dental records and tryin’ to sift through the ashes you left behind. We knew it wouldn’t fool ’em long but it didn’t need to.”

  “Good.”

  The Third Eye kicked into overdrive, lamping every tic and every gesture the suit made. This was new territory for Louis; he felt the suit draw him closer, to a place above the salt, speaking to him on more than a need-to-know basis. Somewhere short of intimate but closer than the distance the suit usually maintained. It was unexpected and Louis fought two feelings — the needle of fear increasing its gauge and the seduction of a boss feigning familiarity with a subordinate. The fear he could handle, the seduction was a different matter. Every blue-collar stiff secretly wanted to sit at the boss’s table no matter how much he cursed and hated the white shirts; every dog wanted a scratch between the ears from the master who kicked it and fed it table scraps.

  The suit took a sip of coffee then signaled Rene with an index finger shooting into the center of the cup. He took another drag on his cigarette. A Dunhill. Louis could see the red pack with the gilt lettering paired with a gold Ronson JetLite on the edge of the table, close to the suit’s chest.

  “I appreciate your confidence in me. I try to do a good job and get satisfaction from doing something well. Having you speak to me this way is an unexpected and delightful pleasure, but I sense something is wrong. Is there a way I can be of service to you again?”

  The suit said nothing, taking in Louis’ elaborate courtesy, turning over the surprisingly polite words, checking them out for subsurface insolence or irony.

  “You been takin’ charm lessons, Louis. From who — my brother or my cousins? You keep this up an’ we’ll have to make you an auxiliary goombah, maybe an honorary Sicilian colonel like they do up in Kentucky. Give you a scroll or somethin’.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend, guy. I was just picking up a vibe, something that told me this wasn’t just a routine meet.”

  The suit’s gaze searched Louis’ face then broke toward the coffee cup.

  “It isn’t. We got a problem — our friend is off the reservation and he has some things that belong to us.”

  “The Houston guy, right?”

  “The same.”

  The suit was relaxed now that Louis was back below the salt, his brief excursion into bossland nothing more than a cheap manipulation straight from the minute manager’s textbook, dropped like a used match when its moment was over. Other manipulations, other ploys weren’t on the suit’s mind — just his own, his problems and the delivery of new marching orders to an employee.

  The sorry bastard. Louis checked his contempt. He didn’t relax; he fed himself more of the needle to stay sharp. This was where suckers slipped up, turning themselves from hunter to prey with a careless word or gesture. Or the wrong question at the wrong time — like how much property was at stake.

  The right question was what and who, not how much. He would have to know who he was looking for and what the guy had but the suit would tell him only as much as he thought Louis needed to know. Look for a strongbox key, look for a ledger, look for some account numbers, look for a warehouse, look for a cassette. That type of thing. Not the nature of what was in the strongbox or what was on the tape or how much the account held or what was sitting in a locked steamer trunk in a numbered stall in a grimy warehouse.

  “Our wayward friend is named Jason Willard Crowe. Big, good lookin’ sonuvabitch — black hair, blue eyes, a real glad-hander. Everybody’s buddy. Used to play ball at one of them big Texas schools. The one with the letters. Blew out a knee before he could make it big. Turned out he had a mind for law, figures and the tax code. Made him real valuable to us. Put our money in oil and gas leases, limited partnerships and the like. Made us legal and made us a good return until the bust. Which put him into us for several million he couldn’t pay back.”

  Time for a dumb question from the hod-carrier.

  “How come he isn’t dead yet, guy?”

  The suit laughed — a short snort of disgust and smoke.

  “Turned out he also had a mind for the import-export business, our style of import-export if you get my drift. Knew a lot about those plants down on the Mexican border, whatchacallit — mack-quila somethin’, sounds like tequila, but with another sound or two tacked on in spic talk.”

  Maquiladora was the word; Louis read Business Week and Fortune and knew all about the special deals American factory-owners could cut by setting up on the south side of the Rio Grande, where labor was cheaper than a clapped-out Chevy and there was no such thing as OSHA or the EPA. Louis could guess the set-up — smuggled goods traveling north in the cavities of manufactured goods from the maquiladoras, greased by la mordita sprea
d among the right federales on both sides of the border and the taste of a factory manager for augmented income or other nastier pleasures.

  “Interesting set-up. Once you get past the GMs, the Motorolas and the other big boys, it gets real fluid. People in and out. Factories open and close. Gotta know the players. This guy did and it made him real valuable to us. The plan was to cool him down in some offshore locale then let him work his magic from the Mex side of the border.”

  The suit shook his head and took another sip of coffee.

  “The plan. Plans and then real life, right Louis?”

  “I take it he picked a bad time to disappear. Am I right, guy?”

  “Nah. From his standpoint, the time was perfect. From ours, the absolute worst. Two shipments — a load of coke and China pearl comin’ in; a shitload of diamonds goin’ out. The front money to grease everybody. And about five mil in fresh-washed cash from what I like to call our Mexican laundromats. All gone. Him too.”

  Louis already knew all of this from one of the cousins, a man with low family status and high ambition, the one who taught him the Italianate footwork of the subtle insult delivered in the wrapping of elaborate courtesies. He also knew the other suits were pissed at the man talking to him, angry that he let an outsider have such a hold on their operation. The suit baring the total sum of their losses to him was proof of this.

  Bad enough he’s got us fuckin’ around down in Mexico and Texas, pissin’ off who knows all in Houston and Galveston, but to trust this cheap fuck of a smilin’ jack after he burns us so bad in these oil and gas deals. Jeezus, what’s the man thinkin’? Fucker shoulda been whacked right then. Instead, dumbfuck’s got him runnin’ our business through Mexico. What the fuck, man — have all them bayous dried up? Did they turn Vermillion Bay into a parkin’ lot? Fuck no, man.

  All said to Louis several months ago over oysters, po’ boys and cold Dixie beers at Uglesich’s, a clapboard cafe in the middle of a badass block of junkyards and crack houses just off of St. Charles, close to the rattle and thump of the steel and concrete overpass of I-10. Natural that the same cousin would tell him the latest twist in this Texas catastrophe when it happened, about two weeks ago. Natural that it would give him a sense of division among the suits, the hint of a blood squabble and an opportunity for an outsider.