The Midnight House jw-4

by Alex Berenson

Noemie stepped back in.

  “I’m sorry,” Wells said. “I can come back.”

  “Just ask your questions, Mr. Wells.”

  “Let me start again, then. You were married in, what, ’99?”

  “Correct. You knew Jerry before that?”

  “In Ranger training. You know, I was gone awhile.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “But before I went to Afghanistan, I remember him saying he was getting married, his wife was ten times as beautiful as he deserved.”

  Noemie gave him the tiniest of smiles.

  “You’re from New Orleans?”

  “No. Came here for college, got my degree in social work from Tulane. After I met Jerry, we jumped around base to base. But I always wanted to come back. Last year, when Jerry retired, I told him after all that time in North Carolina and Texas and what all, he owed me. He didn’t want to, but eventually he agreed.”

  “But you are from Louisiana.”

  “Grew up in Lafayette. Couple hours west of here on the Ten. Mom was black and dad was white, which accounts for this cracker accent. They were both from this swamp town, Morgan City, deep in the bayou. Back when they met, it wasn’t so safe for a white boy and a black girl to be in love down there. Though better that than the other way around. So, they moved to Lafayette. The metropolis. You know how to tell the size of a town in Louisiana?”

  Wells shook his head.

  “Count the McDonald’s. Morgan City only has but one McDonald’s. Lafayette has a whole bunch of ’em. Are you married, Mr. Wells?”

  “I was.” Wells felt the need to say something more. “The job sort of took over.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  There was a whole speech in those two syllables, Wells thought. “Tell me about Jerry’s last tour, in Poland.”

  “A few months before, he’d gotten back from a deployment in Afghanistan. I was worried they were going to send him there again. He wouldn’t have argued. He wasn’t the type to say no. Then he got this call, a special assignment in Poland, working with detainees.”

  “You know why they chose him?”

  “In Afghanistan, he’d done some interrogations.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I was, I am, his wife. He told me enough; I got the picture. They were trying to put a new unit together, one that wouldn’t have any connection to the old squads. Or Guantánamo. One that could run more or less on its own.”

  “That’s about right.”

  “I know that’s right, Mr. Wells. I wasn’t asking.”

  “Did you mind having him over there?”

  “Matter of fact, I didn’t. Figured he was safer in Poland than anywhere else.”

  “But did you have a problem with what he was doing, the interrogations?”

  “These men who want to blow us up? Kill my husband? And then they cry for lawyers soon as we catch them? Start talking about their rights? You are not seriously asking me that.”

  “Jerry felt the same.”

  “Of course.”

  “But not everyone on the squad agreed. Somebody thought they were going too far.” Wells was guessing, chasing the defensiveness in her voice.

  “That what somebody told you?”

  “Yes,” Wells lied.

  “I don’t know all that much about it. But I do know there were arguments. And they got worse as the tour went on. My husband, he went over there with the attitude that they didn’t have to give these guys feather pillows. I don’t got to tell you, Mr. Wells. If there’s one person who knows, it’s you. But it’s strange, ’cause he came back with a different attitude.”

  “Like how?”

  “It’s hard to explain.” She edged away from Wells on the couch, turned to look at him full-on. “Mr. Wells. Do you think my husband did something wrong? If you do, tell me now.”

  “Look. Somebody’s killing the squad. We don’t know why. The logical assumption is that it’s because of something that happened over there. So, we need to know what that was. And there’s only three guys left from the squad, not counting Jerry, and they aren’t talking much—”

  “Why—”

  “Maybe they’re worried they’re gonna get prosecuted for torture. And the records of what they did, they’re buried deep. So, the best bet is talking to you and the other families. You have my word, whatever Jerry did, I’m not after him. I’m not a cop or FBI. I’m working for the agency, and only the agency, to figure this out. And I’m a friend of your husband’s. I know it may not seem that way, since we’ve never met before, but believe me, Ranger training, the guys in your unit, by the end you either can’t stand the sight of them or they’re friends for life. And Jerry was a friend. If he’d called me two months ago, said, ‘I’m in trouble,’ I would have been on the next plane down, no questions asked. That’s just how it is.”

  Not a bad speech, Wells thought. Even if the reality was more complicated. After fifteen years, he probably would have asked at least a couple questions before buying his ticket. But Noemie seemed to like it. She patted his arm, leaned in.

  “I’m telling you, I don’t know much.”

  “Anything.”

  “They were rough. And I think near the end, something went wrong.”

  The FBI interview report didn’t have anything like this from her. Wells waited. “What gave you that impression?” he said finally. “Something he said?”

  “He changed. The last couple months, he didn’t want to talk. Stopped e-mailing. He was hiding something, like he was having an affair. But Jerry would never have done that. Anyway, it was Poland.”

  “He never said anything about what had actually happened?”

  “No.”

  “What about the information the squad developed? Did he ever talk about that? ”

  “No.”

  “Mom-mom!” From the second floor. A boy’s voice.

  “Jeffrey,” she said. “He has nightmares. Since Jerry’s gone. He knows what’s up. The others don’t, but he does.”

  She hurried upstairs.

  I don’t got to tell you, Mr. Wells, she’d said. If there’s one person who knows, it’s you. Was he a torturer? A killer, yes. But never a torturer. Though he’d come close, that night in the Hamptons with Pierre Kowalski, the arms dealer. Another bit of unfinished business. Close to a year before, Wells had found himself outside Kowalski’s mansion in Zurich, pacing, hand on the Makarov tucked into his pants. Then he’d walked away. He’d made a deal with Kowalski, and he’d keep his word. For now.

  NOEMIE RETURNED, trailed by a small boy, a miniature Malcolm Gladwell, a shock of curly hair springing from his head. His T-shirt, printed with a caped Will Smith from the movie Hancock, reached to his knees.

  “This is Jeffrey,” she said.

  “Hi, Jeffrey. Did you like Hancock? ”

  “Mommy wouldn’t let me see it! ”

  “Touchy subject,” Noemie said.

  Jeffrey tugged on his mother’s pants. “I’m sleepy, Mommy.”

  “If you’re sleepy, why weren’t you sleeping?”

  “Want to sleep in your bed.”

  “You know that’s not allowed.” She put him on the couch, settled beside him. He curled into her lap, his face just visible.

  “Please.”

  “Go to sleep here, and when you wake up, it’ll be morning. Deal?”

  Jeffrey nodded happily.

  “We’re going to go from twenty to zero. Promise to be asleep by zero.”

  “Promise.”

  “Close your eyes. Twenty, nineteen. ” She rubbed his forehead as she counted, and by the time she was done, the boy’s mouth had dropped open and his breathing was as steady as the fan overhead.

  “You’re a magician,” Wells said.

  She glanced at her watch. “Anything else you need to know, Mr. Wells? I should get him to bed.”

  “Tell me about what Jerry was like when he got back.”

  “He was quiet, not talking much.”

  “And
you read into that what?”

  “I told you. That something happened he didn’t want to talk about.” She leaned back against the couch. The boy in her lap stirred, and she ran a finger down his arm to calm him. “One time.” She broke off, and Wells waited. “One time, I got home early from work, and he was reading a book about the Nazis. When I saw him with it, it was like I’d caught him looking at I don’t know what. He tried to hide it from me double-quick. I asked him about it, and he told me to mind my business. Which was not usual for him, even at that time. But I let it go. And I never saw the book again.”

  “The Nazis. Do you remember the name of the book?”

  “I do not.”

  Again the boy stirred in her lap, and again she soothed him. “All right, Mr. Wells. I think it’s time for this one to go to bed. Me, too.”

  “Just a couple more questions.”

  “A couple.”

  “You said a while back, you two were having problems before he disappeared. What was that about?”

  “I loved Jerry, and I know he loved me. But like I said, he was different when he came back. And after we moved here, he had a tough time finding work. I guess I figured, a major in the Special Forces, a man like that could always find a job, even in New Orleans. But the corporate stuff — there’s not a lot of companies down here for that work. He did some bodyguard work, but he wanted to be a director of security somewhere. Thought he’d earned that. He told me we should move. I wanted him to give it time. It’d hardly been six months. New Orleans can grow on you.”

  “But you’re sure he wouldn’t have walked out.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “The night he disappeared?”

  “He told me he was going down to the market, pick up a six-pack. He’d been drinking more, too, since he got back. That was around seven p.m. Ten or so, I tried to call him and he didn’t answer.”

  “Were you worried? ”

  “It’d happened a couple of times recently. So, no. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t worried. Figured he was on the corner, hanging out. Watching dice get rolled. When midnight came and he didn’t come home, I decided to see for myself. So, I put my shoes on and I slipped my little.22 in my purse—”

  “You have a gun—”

  “Mr. Wells, you think those bangers out there care about Mace?” She laughed, her voice losing an octave and filling the room. “Mace? This is New Orleans. Mace? Anyway, I went out there, and Harvey, who runs the market, he said he hadn’t seen Jerry in a few hours, said he had himself a quart of Budweiser and went off to the Pearl, a few blocks away.”

  “The Pearl?”

  “The real name is, I believe, Minnie’s Black Pearl. But everyone just calls it the Pearl. A high-class establishment. Get shot in there for wearing the wrong hat. I was in no mood to visit the Pearl, so I went home. I figured Jerry would get home eventually and we would have it out, say some things that needed saying. Like my daddy said, sometimes a big storm clears the air. Though my daddy was full of it.”

  “But Jerry never came home.”

  “He did not. And the next morning, soon as the Pearl opened at eleven, I went over there, showed them the picture, asked if they knew him, and that S-A-N bartender, he started in with, ‘We don’t snitch around here.’ I said, ‘I’m not the cops, I’m the man’s wife,’ and you know what he said. He said, ‘That might be worse.’ So I said, ‘Look, my husband didn’t get home last night, and if you don’t tell me what you know, I will stand outside your bar tonight shouting about Jesus and sinners until you’re the one calling the cops to get rid of me.’ And so I found out what they knew, which was hardly worth the trouble. Jerry drank until eleven, by himself. And then he left. Said he was going home. And that was it. He left the Pearl and turned to smoke.”

  “So, you called the cops?”

  “They said Jerry was a grown man and that if he didn’t turn up in a couple of days I could file a missing-persons report. Which I did, soon as I was allowed. The detectives talked to the bartender down there for about five minutes and then forgot it. I begged The Times-Picayune to write something, and after a month they finally did, some little thing that didn’t even have his picture.”

  “Too bad he wasn’t an eighteen-year-old girl.”

  “You mean a white girl. With blond hair and a big smile. CNN would have been all over it then. But I don’t think it matters, Mr. Wells. I think he died that night.”

  “Why?”

  “My husband, you know how big he was. I don’t think anybody would take a chance keeping him alive. Too easy for him to mess you up.”

  Wells couldn’t disagree.

  “Something else, too,” she said. “I think he knew whoever did this. I don’t think it was Al Qaeda or any of them rats.”

  “Why?”

  “Nobody would go at him straight up, see? Look at the man. And Jerry wouldn’t just be getting in a car. Come on, even little kids know better. So, no, it had to be somebody he knew, make him drop his guard.”

  “The others, they were shot with a silencer,” Wells said, thinking out loud. “Somebody could have done it on the street and then taken his body. Not a lot of lights out there.”

  “They were killed all different ways, though. The woman, the doctor, somebody snuck into her house, made it look like a suicide,” Noemie said. “Somebody been creeping.”

  “Last question.”

  “You already got your last question.”

  “I promise. I don’t want to upset you again, but—” Wells hesitated. She nodded to him. “Is there any chance that Jerry’s the one behind this? That he’s faked his own death. You said he was upset—”

  “I said he was in a mood. Come on, Mr. Wells. You knew my husband. You cannot be serious. He was angry that he didn’t get a promotion, angry that they made him retire. He wasn’t a killer.”

  You’re wrong, Wells didn’t say. He was a soldier. A Ranger. He was nothing more or less than a trained, professional killer.

  Just like me.

  “And now I have to put this boy in his bed,” Noemie said. She picked up Jeffrey, put him over her shoulder. His eyes blinked open, and he looked suspiciously at Wells.

  “Thank you, Noemie. If I have more questions, can I call you?”

  “Uh-huh. And if you check out the Pearl, keep your back to the wall. They don’t like white people much in there.”

  “I don’t blame them.”

  THE PEARL WAS CHEAP and flashy, Hennessy posters on the walls, faded red vinyl booths, and a half-dozen Mercedes hood ornaments hanging from the ceiling. Wells didn’t get any smiles when he walked in. Not from the bartender, a tall, skinny man with a Saints cap pulled low on his forehead. Not from the three boys in the corner booth who wore identical gold studs. Not from the two old heads deep in conversation at the bar. And not from the woman in the silver bikini dancing listlessly on the back counter to the heavy slow sounds of rap that sounded like it was being played at half speed.

  Whatever had happened in Poland had upset Jerry Williams more than a bit, Wells thought. The Pearl wasn’t a place Jerry would have favored when Wells knew him. Wells debated staying, forcing the issue, maybe taking a seat with the boys in the booth. But what was he trying to prove? He would come back tomorrow and get the same stiff non-answers about Jerry Williams as the New Orleans cops.

  “You lost?”the bartender said.

  Wells shook his head. “Thanks.”

  “Thanks for what?” the bartender said. Then, under his breath, “Dummy.”

  Wells knew he ought to walk away. But after Cairo, he was in no mood to get pushed around. “I’ll take a Bud,” he said.

  “We’re all out.”

  “Miller.”

  “Out of that, too.”

  “Then a gin and tonic. Tanqueray.” A half-full bottle of Tanqueray sat on the back counter directly across from Wells.

  The bartender turned down the music. “You dumb or just playing that way?”

  “There’s no call for this
.”

  “Go back to the Quarter where you belong.” He took two steps toward Wells, his hands loose at his sides.

  Wells turned toward the door, as if he were leaving. Then he spun back and with his right hand grabbed the bartender’s skinny left arm and pulled him down onto the scarred wood of the bar and knocked off his glasses. Wells stepped forward and with his left hand reached down the bartender’s back for the pistol that he knew would be tucked into the man’s jeans. He grabbed the pistol, a Beretta knockoff that fit snugly in his hand. Still holding the bartender down, he turned to cover the room. The action had taken less than three seconds, and the kids in the corner hadn’t moved. Yet.

  “You are either a cop or a damn fool,” the bartender mumbled. “And I know you ain’t no cop.”

  Wells let go of the bartender’s arm, stepped back from the bar. “Slowly. Put your hands on top of your heads. All of you.”

  They complied. Wells knew he didn’t have long. Soon enough, one of the bangers would do something stupid, and then he’d have blood on his hands for this stunt.

  “Quicker you answer my questions, the quicker I’m gone. I’m trying to find a friend of mine. He came in here for a beer a couple months back. Been missing ever since. Named Jerry Williams. Big guy. Ring any bells?”

  “That what you hassling me for? I told the cops, I don’t know nothing about it,” said the bartender.

  “Jerry and I were Rangers together. Now he’s missing. This is the last place anybody saw him. Do me a favor, answer my questions, I get out of here.”

  Unwillingly: “Ask what you gotta ask.”

  Wells tucked the pistol into his jeans. “Ever see anybody with Jerry?”

  “Not hardly. He drank quiet. Put a twenty on the bar, nod when he wanted a hit. He put out two twenties, then I knew he needed some relaxation. Once or twice, late night, we got to talking; he told me he was a vet. Said nobody understood what it was like over there, you had to be there. Nothing more.”

  “He ever say anything about disappearing, getting out of New Orleans?”

  “Not to me.”

  “He seem nervous ever? Like somebody was after him?”

  The bartender shook his head.

  “Ever talk about his wife?”