by Mark Dawson
“And did you see it this morning? Mayor’s office is getting involved, too.”
Milton wasn’t in the mood for a discussion, although he had read the newspaper over his breakfast. “You need anything else from me?”
“No, sir. We’re all good.”
“Thank you.”
He got up. He had the final four hundred thousand dollars in his pack. He would deposit that when he got to Florida. No sense in attracting undue attention to himself. He figured that depositing all of it in New Orleans on the same day would be asking for that to happen. He had looked into the Bank Secrecy Act, and knew that each institution he used would have to file a Currency Transaction Report with the government. No way around that with deposits as big as these. He had the documentation for three separate identities, and he had opened new accounts for all of them. He had varied the amounts—$150,000 in one, $250,000 in another, $200,000 here—and he hoped that might muddy the waters.
The manager walked him to the door.
“What do you have planned for the rest of the day, sir?”
“Not too much.”
“Well, you have a good one.”
“Thanks,” Milton said. “You, too.”
#
THE BANK was only a couple of blocks from the bus station. He shrugged his pack onto his shoulders, collected his rifle, and walked there. It was another hot, sticky day, and he hoped that the bus would be air-conditioned.
The bus station was a simple affair: eight bays, a single-storey concrete building with a tinted glass front. There were a clutch of passengers in the waiting room, leery of waiting in the broil outside. Milton checked the destinations board. The bus to Miami was leaving from Bay C in ten minutes. He walked over, took his phone and headphones from his pack, put them into his pocket, and slung the pack into the cargo bay.
The driver was waiting at the door.
“Ticket?”
Milton took the one-way ticket from his pocket and handed it to him. The driver checked it, punched it, and handed it back. Milton climbed aboard. The bus was almost full, with just a handful of spare seats. The other passengers eyed him with lazy disinterest. Milton took the seat that was closest to the front. The man alongside was unshaven, wearing a denim jacket and badly patched jeans, a bandana on his head. He smelled a little ripe, like he hadn’t seen a bar of soap for a while. Milton didn’t mind. There were plenty of days, out in the wilderness, when he was just the same.
“You all right?” the man said as he settled in next to him.
“Doing okay.”
He put out a hand. “I’m Jack Wishard.”
Milton clasped it. “John Smith.”
The door shut with a whoosh of compressed air, and the driver started the engine. The silver bus, gleaming in the sunshine, pulled out of the station and edged into the busy traffic.
“Where you headed?”
“Miami.”
“Me, too. What you doing down there?”
“Nothing special. Just thought I’d go have a look. It’s been a while since I last visited.”
“What business you in, John?”
“This and that. Whatever I can find.”
“I know that kind of work.” The man reached down into a knapsack on the floor and took out a can of beer. Milton saw several others nestled in there. “Want one?”
Milton shook his head. “I’m good. But thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” The man popped the top and took a long slug. He smacked his lips and sighed contentedly. “Man, I needed that. Long drive ahead, John. I do this trip once a month, go down there and see my little girl. Me and the wife split up. She went down there to her folks, took Daisy with her. Fourteen hours, every four weeks, stuck on this frickin’ bus. Best way I ever found to make it go faster, you get a little buzz on. You sure you don’t want one?”
“I’m good.”
“All right.”
The man took another long swig and then, sensing that Milton wasn’t particularly interested in conversation, looked out of the window.
The bus rolled north east on I-10, passing the abandoned Six Flags, the skeletal struts of the roller coaster picked out in the blistering sun. They passed through Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge, the dense vegetation reminding him of the bayou shack where Avi Bachman’s wife had met her end.
Milton settled himself so that the pain from his injuries became a dull ache that he could almost ignore and closed his eyes. He was tired. He thought of Izzy and her family, the meals that he had enjoyed in the beautiful home that she had built, and drew satisfaction from the knowledge that they would have no need to move now. Solomon and Elsie could live and die in the Lower Nine, surrounded by old neighbours called back by the progress that was being made by their daughter. Their amazing, inspiring daughter. Milton had made mistakes, but not there. It was a good job, well done.
The bus rumbled onto the Pontchartrain Expressway across the glittering, treacherous waters of Lake Pontchartrain and headed on to Slidell, Diamondhead, and Diberville.
Milton thought of Avi Bachman. Was he a loose end? He could have put a bullet in him, tied it up for good, but Izzy was there, and what would she have thought of that? He had lifted his mask a little since he had arrived in town, but taking it off completely would have poisoned him to her forever. He couldn’t have done that. He had done the only thing that he could have done. But, still, the idea of a man like Avi Bachman, or Claude Boon—or whatever he chose to call himself—walking the earth with a grudge against him was not something that would allow for easy sleep. The thought that he was incarcerated was of some comfort.
Wishard finished his first can, closed his eyes, and started to snore. Milton opened his eyes and looked out past him at the unwinding landscape, the endless Gulf and the primeval swamp that fringed the road. They drove alongside a long, wide inlet and, as Milton watched, a big alligator roused itself from the burning rocks and slid into the muddy waters, quickly sinking out of sight.
Milton closed his eyes and tried, again, to sleep.
Epilogue
CLAUDE BOON waited in line. There were three pay phones and six men who wanted to use them. Louisiana State Penitentiary was known as Angola, but the inmates referred to it as the Farm. It was the largest maximum-security prison in the United States, with more than six thousand offenders and nearly two thousand staff.
It was a nasty, brutish place, but there was nothing too surprising about that. Boon expected it. He had heard all the stories: rape, gang rape, men who were bought and sold like cattle.
Boon was not a large man. He did not look particularly impressive.
Fresh meat.
Boon had been in places like it before and knew what he would have to do to render his stay bearable. He knew, for example, that he needed to make a demonstration as soon as he arrived. He selected the man who would help him to do that. An inmate called Clarence Wright, better known as the “Booty Bandit,” a bear of a man whose vocation was beating, torturing, and sodomising fellow inmates while prison guards looked the other way. Wright, a psychopathic serial rapist, was the guards’ resident enforcer. They arranged for men who needed to be reined in to be transferred to his cell. Boon made a nuisance of himself in the canteen to make that happen and, on the first night, as Wright made his move, Boon murdered him with a shank that he had fashioned from a toothbrush, pushing the sharpened plastic into his throat. The carotid artery had been severed clean in two, and Boon had bathed in the fountain of the big man’s blood. None of the guards or other inmates wanted anything to do with him after that.
Now the authorities were in the process of adding a new homicide charge to his rap sheet, but Boon didn’t care about that. He wouldn’t be around long enough for that to become relevant.
The man at the phone nearest to the line finished his call and replaced the receiver. Boon walked to the phone, ignoring his place in the queue. One of the others, a tattooed brute who ran with Ride or Die, started to protest until he saw who it was who was cut
ting the line.
Boon gave him a glance, even and calm, and saw the man take a step away from him.
He picked up the phone and dialled the number that he still remembered from all those years ago.
“Pronto Dry Cleaning. How can I help you?”
“I need to speak to the director.”
There was a slight pause as the woman on the other end of the call adjusted her expectations. “Can I ask who’s calling, please?”
“Yes,” Boon said. “Tell him it’s Avi Bachman. I’d like to come home.”
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
Thanks for reading Salvation Row. I hope you enjoyed it. I’m very fond of New Orleans, ever since I visited it as a fresh faced 21 year old (an awfully long time ago). I remember Bourbon Street, an amazing visit to Preservation Hall for some very funky jazz, and looking out over the Mississippi just like Milton. Hurricane Katrina and the consequences of the storm couldn’t really have been any more traumatic for a city that was already struggling, and I hope I have done justice to New Orleanians like Izzy Bartholomew who have worked so hard to repair the damage. Her fictional charity, Build It Up, is unashamedly based on the groundbreaking work done by the Make It Right Foundation, set up by Brad Pitt in the aftermath of the storm to repair the damage to the Lower Ninth. I will be making a donation to the charity, so some of the money you spent in buying this book will be going to a very good, and very deserving cause.
John Milton will be back in 2015. He has unfinished business with Avi Bachman…
Best wishes
Mark Dawson
Wiltshire, UK
December 2014
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS BOOK…
…I would really, really appreciate it if you would help others to enjoy it, too. Reviews are like gold dust and they help persuade other readers to give the stories a shot. More readers means more incentive for me write and that means there will be more stories, more quickly.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Dawson is the author of the breakout John Milton, Beatrix Rose and Soho Noir series. He makes his online home at www.markjdawson.com. You can connect with Mark on Twitter at @pbackwriter, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/markdawsonauthor and you should send him an email at [email protected] if the mood strikes you.
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