The Caesar Clue (The Micah Dunn Mysteries)

by Malcolm Shuman

  I went down, nodding to Lavelle, who was reading the Picayune, waiting for victims.

  “Hell of a thing,” he said indignantly, thumping the paper. “Did you see this?”

  “What?”

  He flourished his paper at me and I caught something about assassination on the front page.

  “That silly asshole Stokley got blown up yesterday.”

  “Stokley? Emerson Stokley?” I asked, surprised.

  “The honorable himself, the man the good citizens around here sent to Congress to throw money at the military.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was in the Virgin Islands on a tour. Somebody lobbed a grenade into his cabana.” He shook his head. “I don’t agree with all his politics. But he’s no worse than most of ‘em they’ve got up there.”

  “You sound unusually tolerant today,” I commented.

  He shrugged. “What can I say? The man did me a favor once when he was on the council. A bunch of fundamentalists were trying to zone me out of business.”

  “Perfidy everywhere,” I said.

  For some reason I was glad to get out on the street, where the morning sun was already raising little heat waves from the tar street. The people I saw were not interested in Caribbean terrorism. I passed tourists with cameras, businessmen in seersucker suits that were already wrinkled, and a few winos leaning back against the walls of buildings, not knowing if it was day or night. All in all, it looked like a simpler world than the one that seemed to be reaching out to drag me in.

  I wasn’t sure where I was going; I just needed a chance to think, and I did it best on the street, with a flow of bodies around me. I hadn’t been that way before Nam, but something about the green loneliness of the jungle made the loneliness of cities more tolerable now.

  Twenty minutes later I was standing on Canal, outside the Clarion Hotel, watching a bellhop unload a limo while a woman in a big hat fretted about some gewgaw she couldn’t locate.

  I realized now I’d been thinking about Solly. This was where he was staying, he’d said, but I hadn’t come to spy on him. I wasn’t sure why I’d come, in fact. So I just stood there, sweating, as people passed, and then, when it was too late, I turned around and saw the man behind me and knew there was no longer any choice but to go in.

  6

  Another one met me in the lobby and they formed an escort into the elevator. Before anybody else could get in they pressed the button, the door closed, and we began to rise. Five flights later the elevator halted and one of the men motioned for me to get out. I’d seen them before, not the same faces, but the same men, nevertheless; gray suits, dark glasses, conservative ties, and an earpiece and lapel pin each. Under the sports coats each would have a .357 or maybe, things being what they were, a Berreta 9mm. They were part of an army, but it was not one I’d ever wanted to belong to.

  We walked down the narrow hallway, past rooms with breakfast trays out front. It was an old hotel, with an air of faded middle-class memories. Many of the rooms were small, and the restaurant wasn’t four stars, but it saw its share of conventions.

  The man behind me had been mumbling into his lapel mike, and one of the doors ahead of us opened suddenly and a third man in the same uniform stood aside for us to enter.

  If I expected a spook setup, I was in for disappointment. Some breakfast trays were on the bureau and luggage stand and a newspaper was spread over one unmade bed. There was no communications center, which meant they either had a suite or, more likely, a house nearby. The only concession to the electronic age was a VCR, hooked to the television, but then, maybe they liked girlie tapes.

  Solly was sitting in the chair farthest from the door and he managed a smile when he saw me.

  “Micah. I’m glad to see you.” He got up and gave me a handshake I thought was a little too hearty.

  Everybody seemed to be waiting for something, and that was when I realized water was running in the bathroom. The door opened then and a fifth man came out, wiping his hands on a towel.

  Older than the others, he sported a bushy black mustache and a silk shirt that must have cost fifty dollars. A PPK, the CIA’s favorite handweapon, hung from a Berns-Martin fast-draw rig, and a pack of cigarillos stuck out of his top pocket.

  “Excuse me,” he said, giving me a steel grip. “But New Orleans’s famous food is about to do me in.”

  His English was accentless, which is what happens when you spend a little bit of your life everywhere. Since he wore a West Point ring, though, I figured he’d spent at least four years in one place.

  There was silence while he reached for his cigarettes, found the pack was empty, and threw the container into the trash. One of the men handed him a fresh pack and he broke the cellophane.

  He waved me to a chair and lit the thin, brown cigarette while the others watched. “Captain Dunn, you must be psychic,” he said finally. “We were going to invite you over but you came on your own. Remarkable. Maybe there’re something to this ESP crap after all.”

  “Linda Marconi is dead,” I said evenly. “Somebody killed her. Then they dumped her in Bayou St. John.”

  He shook his head. “Hell of a thing. But, take my word for it, there are worse things happening. I’d like to tell you about some of them. My name is Cox. I’m in charge of this operation.”

  The lights went off suddenly and one of the agents pushed the buttons on the television. The screen sprang to life.

  “Nothing we’re about to discuss goes beyond this room, I hope that’s understood.”

  “I don’t make blind promises,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re getting ready to show me.”

  I caught some alarmed glances but my host seemed unruffled.

  “Fair enough. You’ve paid your dues. I don’t think anybody could doubt your patriotism.”

  I was looking at a car, or rather, what had once been a car, before something had reduced it to twisted scrap. A gendarme was standing to one side and a news crew was at the fringe of the picture.

  “Marseilles, February third of this year,” Cox said. “Tally: two dead. One was the American resident DEA agent. News reports called him a tourist.”

  The video ran for an instant longer than I needed; I’d seen bombed cars before, in the streets of Saigon, and it brought back smells and sounds I’d have rather forgotten.

  Next was a sailboat, moored to a wharf.

  “The Recife Queen, out of St. Croix. Owned by a Dutchman named van Guilder. The boat was found drifting in the Caribbean on May twenty-first. There was blood on the planking.” In confirmation, the camera zoomed in on the deck and I saw brown stains. “No sign of van Guilder, but a satellite picked up a yacht in the area, headed for Colombia. Too late to intercept.” He paused. “Van Guilder was a contract agent for the CIA. He was checking into drug traffic in the islands.”

  A third picture. This time a brick building with the front blown out and a fire truck playing a steady stream of water on the ruins while people ran back and forth.

  “This was taken in Cuernavaca, Mexico. One of the chief DEA informants for that area ran a laundry here and lived in the back. He was killed, along with his wife and three children. That was on July fifteenth.”

  I should have expected the next part, but it caught me by surprise. I was staring at a cypress swamp, but something was wrong with it. The usual tranquility seemed somehow disturbed, and then, as the camera zoomed in on the hunks of metal sticking into the mud, I understood.

  “Transcaribbean Flight 420,” Cox intoned. “I don’t have to tell you about that one. Sixty-seven people killed. Innocent people. Just to get Julia Morvant. At first, as Major Cranich told you, we thought she was the one with the bomb. But now we know better.”

  The camera lingered for an extra, unnecessary ten seconds and then one of the agents pushed a button to stop it.

  “Sixty-seven people were killed to get one,” Cox said. “That tells you something about the people we’re up against.” He nodded and the tape sta
rted again. This time it was part of one of the morning’s network newscasts.

  “Yesterday evening,” said the voice of the newscaster, “an attempt was made on the life of Louisiana Congressman Emerson Stokley. Stokley, a senior member of the influential House Armed Services Committee, has recently called for stricter enforcement of drug laws and increased use of the military in curtailing drug traffic. The congressman was on a fact-finding mission in the Virgin Islands when a bomb was thrown into the house where he was staying.”

  The scene shifted from the television studio to a rustic street, where blocks of a wall had been blown into the road and a tile-roofed house smouldered from the great hole in its side.

  “Congressman Stokley was taken to a nearby hospital with superficial wounds to the head and face. His wife, who was in the room with him at the time, suffered a possible concussion and flash burns.”

  The screen flicked to a file picture of the Stokleys and I thought, looking at her, that she reminded me vaguely of Katherine.

  “Both the congressman and his wife were evacuated by military aircraft and are expected to recover. Meanwhile, local police were carrying out a search for the would-be assassin and FBI agents are expected to arrive within hours to make a full investigation.”

  The screen faded and abruptly a man’s face appeared. It was a police photo, and he was looking through the camera as if by so doing he could pretend he was somewhere else. He had thin black brows, a pugnacious jaw, and Latin features. The signboard around his neck was marked Guatemala. The sign said his name was Angel Cordoba.

  “Don’t let the sign fool you,” Cox said. “His real name is Rivas. Adolfo Rivas. He used Cordoba when he was picked up last year in Guatemala. They held him on a firearms charge, and then he bought his way loose before we could send agents to take him back to the U.S.” The tape shifted to a black-and-white street scene, a man getting into a Renault, then looking back over his shoulder, as if he sensed he was being watched.

  “Rivas was born in south Texas. So he’s a U.S. citizen. His parents were Mexicans. He was a militant in the early seventies, but the movement wasn’t militant enough for him, so he went to Cuba. From Cuba we think he may have gone to the USSR for formal terrorist training. He showed up again in the early eighties, as a hit man with connections to the Nicaraguan government and also with Panama’s Noriega. Looks like somewhere along the line his ideology got lost in the shuffle, because we know he carried out a couple of hits for the Colombian cartel. This year he’s been in his full glory. The pictures we showed you first are his work. He seems to feel like he’s striking a blow for the revolution if he can bring the U.S. down through drugs. Or maybe he’s just greedy. We know he can command a million a hit.”

  Now I saw Rivas with a mustache, lounging on a patio with a swimming pool in the background and jungle foliage visible over a garden wall. His body was squat and muscled, his chest matted with thick hair. I wondered where the photographer had been, and admired his guts.

  “Rivas blew up the airplane. We think it was because they were afraid of the Morvant girl, that she was turning on them, ready to inform. We think he then took a hop to the Virgins, where he threw a bomb into Stokley’s house. Only this time he wasn’t so lucky. The congressman and his wife were in the next room.”

  “You have some proof?” I asked, my stomach suddenly weak. I’d felt like this during the briefings for intelligence missions in Nam.

  “He was IDed at the airport. Also driving away from Stokley’s on a motor scooter,” the man by the TV said.

  I looked over at him, vaguely surprised, as if a mannequin had spoken. Cox nodded agreement and exhaled a cloud of smoke.

  “The girl in the bayou, too?” I asked.

  Cox nodded. “Her, too. We found a late night who saw a man pushing something out of a car, into the water. His description wasn’t perfect, but close enough.”

  “Jesus,” I breathed.

  “So now you have it.” He tapped a folder that had appeared mysteriously at his slide. “This dossier includes his vitals, habits, known associates, but I’m afraid it won’t help much, because he’s a smart bastard, always changing his appearance and his habits. He always works alone, and uses people like they were toys.”

  Now the weakness was spreading. I looked over at Solly, but he looked away.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Because, Captain Dunn, we need your help. He’s in New Orleans and we think he’ll strike again.”

  “What can I do about it?” I asked, once more knowing the answer before I spoke.

  Cox looked at me without smiling. “Captain Dunn, we want you to find him for us. And if he resists, we want you to kill him.”

  7

  There was a long silence and then someone cleared his throat.

  “I’m not an assassin,” I said finally. “I don’t hire out to kill people.”

  “We know that,” Cox snapped. He tapped another folder. “In fact, we know all about you, Captain. We know what you do now, and what you used to do, and how well you did it. We know you hold the Silver Star, Purple Heart, and a few dozen other decorations. We know how you were treated when you came home.” His jaw set now and I sensed he was no longer talking about me. “We know how everybody was treated. But you especially.”

  “Lots of guys had it worse,” I said, but his words burned. It wasn’t something I liked to think about, a part of my body that wouldn’t work, a marriage gone sour, the loneliness of trying to find a new occupation.

  “Lots of guys aren’t Captain Micah Dunn,” he said. “We have Solly Cranich’s word for that.”

  Solly gave me a self-conscious smile and I knew he was uncomfortable. His forte was action, not words.

  “Solly’s your man,” I said. “Solly’s the best there ever was.”

  “Major Cranich is as good as you say,” Cox agreed. “Maybe even better. But he doesn’t know New Orleans like you do, Captain.”

  “Listen,” I said, “knock off the captain shit. I’m out. I have been for twenty years. I don’t need flattery.”

  And the constant use of my former rank was getting to me, as he probably knew it would.

  “No flattery,” Cox said. He shot a hard look at Solly. “You didn’t tell him?”

  Solly shook his head morosely.

  Cox turned back to me. “Cranich over there retired as a major, as you know. When he came to us his commission was reactivated. He really is a major, on detached active duty.”

  “Congratulations,” I told Solly, my heart starting to thunder. Cox held up a sheet of paper.

  “Do you know what this is?”

  “Tell me,” I said, already sure of the answer, and yet afraid to ask.

  “This is a request,” Cox said. “Made out to the Secretary of the Navy by the head of my agency. All I have to do is sign it and forward it through channels. But that’s a formality, because I already have a verbal agreement with all parties.” He leaned toward me and I got a whiff of his cologne. “If you come aboard, your commission will be reactivated, just like Solly’s, and you’ll be returned to detached active duty as a captain in the Marine Corps.”

  I was starting to shake now and hoping he wouldn’t see it. Twenty years. The dreams, the hopes, the envy as I watched others rise through the officer ranks …

  “And, of course,” Cox went on, “once we get Rivas, there’ll be others. Our work isn’t likely to dry up in my lifetime, or yours, or theirs.” He motioned around the room, then turned back to me and extended a hand.

  “Congratulations, Captain Dunn.”

  I knew I was shaking now, as I accepted his handshake.

  “Look,” I began weakly. “I said I don’t kill people. And all this was twenty years ago, anyway. You don’t need a one-armed agent.”

  “You remember what Lincoln said about Grant when they called him a drunkard? Send a barrel to my other generals? Maybe we need more one-armed agents. That’s what Soll
y says. I agree.” He chuckled for the first time. “And we aren’t asking you to kill anybody. We aren’t in that business. When we lay hands on this bastard, we aim to turn him over to the U.S. attorney, who holds a warrant for drug trafficking, and when they finish with him, we’ll give him to the state for prosecution for murder. If they don’t fry him, he’ll spend the rest of his days in Marion.”

  “Unless he puts up a struggle,” I said.

  Cox shrugged. “That goes without saying. And, to be realistic, he probably will. If he’s killed, nobody’s the loser. If not, we get him.”

  “And if I’m killed?”

  “Do you want to be a private detective forever? Spend the rest of your life looking through bedroom windows? Last year you almost got killed in a shootout on the wharves here. Come on, Dunn, you’re too good for that. Christ, man, we’re giving you an out.”

  “I’d like to think it over,” I said.

  Cox rose from his chair. “Sure,” he said, faintly annoyed. “Take a day. We don’t have any more. Rivas doesn’t give a damn about our personnel situation.”

  “I understand,” I said and got up myself.

  Solly started forward, then stopped, his face confused. He was wondering why I hadn’t jumped at the opportunity, of course. And so was I. After all, it was an attractive proposition and he almost had me, but something about the last part, attacking my profession, hit me the wrong way.

  Back in the sunlight, I wandered south along Canal and then, when I got to Baronne, turned south. My shirt was sticking to me, but it wasn’t entirely the sun that was making me sweat. I had to go inside, sit down, put my thoughts together.

  I came to O’Rourke’s law office and went in. The receptionist’s desk was empty and I heard a rustle of papers from the inner sanctum. A second later O’Rourke himself came out, a legal pad in his hand, his shirt open at the collar.