The Blue Garou (Detective 'Cadillac' Holland Series Book 1)

by H Hiller

  “Your nephew's got good speed.” I used the lie to break the ice as the family passed me in the gravel parking lot next to the ice cream parlor on Carrollton Avenue. The proud father smiled as he turned to the sound of my voice but Gabb froze when he recognized me.

  “What are you doing here?” Agent Gabb looked around to see if I was alone. I think my being alone unnerved him even more. He placed himself between his family and me.

  “You need to leave here right now and come see me in my office tomorrow.”

  “You don’t want me in your office.”

  Gabb moved towards me. “The truth is, I have no idea who you even are. I ran a background check on you and my boss received a call saying that you have a Homeland Security block on your files and to drop the matter. All we found out is that you graduated from a military prep-school, have a degree in political science from VMI, and were a repeatedly decorated Green Beret. Then there is a big gap before you joined the State Patrol. That probably means you went to work for the CIA or some other intelligence outfit. As it turns out, we have agents in our office who worked in Iraq and remember your name. They told me that you were at the center of a pretty intense diplomatic incident in Iraq, in which you were wounded and an important Iraqi went missing. I can’t find out anything else about that but now here you are, a State Trooper in business with a foreign national that the State Department will also not share their files on. All they will say is that he is here legally. So, yeah, I have been trying to figure out what to make of you. I don’t suppose you’d care to elaborate?”

  “Let me put it to you this way. Do you like sausage, yes or no?”

  “Yes.” Gabb played along but he expected me to get back to the topic.

  “Would you care to see it made?”

  Gabb understood my point and shook his head.

  “Well that was the sort of black-ops work I was doing in those years you can’t find.”

  “How did you wind up here?” the Agent seemed to think I came to have a polite conversation. “I doubt your father’s disappearance was enough of a reason. You hadn’t lived here for years so I don’t believe home sickness brought you back.”

  “You have no idea what it really means to miss New Orleans. And what I came to discuss with you would not be good to have on the record.”

  Agent Gabb looked at me, still cross and now more defensive than ever. He waved his brother’s family ahead but remained behind to talk with me. His sister-in-law looked terrified as she shooed the children ahead of her.

  “What would that be?”

  “Let’s start with your informant calling himself Bumper Jackson.”

  “You can understand when I say that is a classified operation.”

  “Well your guy is going way off the rails. I can link your informant to a blackmail scheme and will to Biggie’s murder. I am going to bet he will drag you down with him.”

  There were people coming and going in the gravel parking lot, but not many, and none of them paid us any mind.

  “Do you really think you have enough for an indictment? It's going to be your word against the FBI's. And you might have a lot of explaining of your own to do if we’re pressed.”

  “I don’t care what you think you know about me, but I won’t stop until I have enough to put a needle in your informant’s arm and force an early retirement for you and your boss.”

  Agent Gabb stared me in the eye for a moment, but he was the one who blinked.

  “Damn it.”

  “Well that answers that. You already know your operation is a fiasco. All is not lost, though. You probably have some idea of how discreet my investigations tend to be.”

  “Your arrangement with Chief Avery does sound unique.” The FBI Agent tried to grin. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Someone’s going to have to arrest Bumper, but it doesn’t have to be me.” I didn't want the Agent to think there was any resolution that did not involve Bumper’s arrest. “The trick is going to be to control the fallout. We may find some sort of silver lining if we work together.”

  “I'm listening.”

  “The idea of running an undercover operation is not too bad, especially here. Maybe I can help you not only salvage it but to enhance it. Biggie left the business to his son but the boy's adoptive mother wants nothing to do with it. The FBI could buy the label from her, using new Agents, and then own the place. I can see to it that the death is closed as the animal attack everyone already thinks it is. Arresting the informant should also end the blackmail.”

  “I’m not sure they make a rug big enough to sweep all of this under.”

  “The last I knew, I am the only detective looking into the possibility of this being a murder and not an accident. That is unless you want to start your own investigation.”

  “We'll pass, thank you. So you cover up the crimes, then what?”

  “Cover up is a strong word. Think of it as reaching a conclusion in line with the public perception of justice.”

  “I’m gonna write that one down!” Gabb finally felt comfortable enough to laugh at something.

  “Anyway, give Bumper a plea bargain on whatever charges you want. It would be best if they didn’t bring publicity to Amanda Rhodes and her son.”

  “So, the FBI gives a plea bargain to my informant, buys the studio from the boy's mother, puts in new Agents, and we act like nothing happened? That’s your plan?”

  We faced each other in silence for a couple of minutes while he rolled the proposition around in his head. I already knew Avery was going to accept anything plausible that I came up with, and it would just ruin the surprise if I admitted to Agent Gabb that I wasn’t going to rest until he was sitting in a cell beside Bumper. He had to be aware of most, if not all, of what his man had been up to and had let it continue. What I wanted him to take from this conversation was that I was about to close his shop up tight, but I was going to give him one last opportunity to get himself on the right side of things before that day came.

  “And you can prove all of what you have told me, right?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Having Bumper confess to all of this would definitely make me feel more confident of your case. Crappier about the situation, but better about the strength of your case.” I understood his point, but I think the real point he was trying to make was that he wasn’t going to let himself be implicated by me in anything his own informant wouldn’t say he had done. I doubt he thought for a second that Bumper would possibly roll over on him, which meant he had something else on Bumper than whatever was going on at the studio. Now I had something else to investigate. The Agent and I had very little else to discuss about the case right then, but I realized there was another matter we could talk about.

  “There is a price tag, of course.”

  “There always seems to be.” This part of our chat was probably what had him the most nervous.

  “You need to drop the investigation into my background. Who has the file you started on my partner and me?”

  “The formal inquiry never got off the ground. I just looked over your jacket with the State Patrol and Army and I made a couple of unofficial phone calls.” Gabb was anxious to downplay the background check now that he saw the hornet’s nest he had kicked.

  “So nobody will miss those notes when you give them to me.” It was a suggestion I didn’t want him to misinterpret as being only a suggestion.

  “Oh, these are the sort of notes people in my position find very valuable.” Gabb chose to start showing a little backbone.

  “They are also the same sort of thing people in my position shouldn’t have to worry about. You can never really anticipate how I might react if I feel cornered.”

  “And just how might you react if you and your partner were investigated formally?”

  “Probably violently.”

  “Are you threatening me?” The Agent’s gun hand was beginning to bend upwards by his sidearm. I kept my own hands in very plain sight, but had alrea
dy decided how to incapacitate him if he went for his weapon without using my own.

  “No more than I feel threatened. You were told to ignore my background by your own Bureau. Just remember I have a stronger taste for making sausage than you do.”

  Agent Gabb’s brother shouted from the corner of the ice cream shop and he turned nervously to let him know he was on his way. He turned back towards me and caught me looking at his brother. Conroy started to say something more, but knew he had started a cycle of escalating threats that had gone farther than he ever intended and the smartest thing to do now was to shut up.

  THIRTY ONE

  Tulip and I have supper at the bistro on the second Wednesday of each month, and then we alternate having supper with our mother the following Friday. This normally allows us to plan talking points and an escape strategy for the sibling tasked with handling a month’s worth of our mother’s anxieties and opinions. This month, though, our topic of discussion was the case I had pulled her into. She let me know that Logan had abandoned Tyshika’s threatened lawsuit.

  Tony sat down to eat with us at his chef’s table in the bistro’s kitchen. It was barely after five in the afternoon and the dinner rush was still hours away. We devoured a plate of fresh anti-pasta and then Tony brought Tulip’s favorite dish, braised scallops and shrimp in a sauce that tasted of little more than citrus and barely melted butter. One of the new servers was tasked with making a zabaglione table-side so Tony could see if she was ready to do so for the paying guests. He opened a second bottle of wine as we pushed back from the meal and began to discuss the case, which had become far more serious now that I had established that Biggie was actually murdered and my new girlfriend was being blackmailed by an FBI informant. I was still spending every evening with Amanda, but we never discussed Biggie’s murder, the blackmail, or Cisco’s serious accusations about Georgia in his interview. I knew I was going to have to learn the truth about any involvement Georgia had eventually, but Avery still wasn’t pressing about the case and I rather enjoyed the benefits of not upsetting my famous actress lover.

  The first thing Tony picked up on, which I had not, was that Bumper would steer me into the VIP lounge any time we spoke. This had made a certain element of sense the first time, as neither of us wanted our conversation overheard in the crowded outer office. Just closing the office door would not have diminished the interest of the staff in what Bumper and I discussed. He had to maintain his anti-cop appearance, after all. The last time we spoke, though, he had eventually steered me out of the soundproof studio and into the VIP lounge. We could not decide if this meant the VIP lounge was equipped with electronic counter-surveillance measures, or if it was wired for sound and video and I had been steered there so Bumper could replay the interviews with Gabb. I had not picked up any indication that SAC Conroy had seen any such video if this was the case. It struck me during my meeting with the SAC that he was happy being unaware of the finer details of this particular undercover operation whenever possible.

  “Do you think Bumper will pat you down when you confront him with everything you have learned?” The question sprang from what Tony would do under the circumstances.

  “I wouldn’t talk unless I knew he was clean if I was in his shoes.”

  “Well neither of us would talk.”

  Tulip gave us both a curious look when we laughed at Tony’s comment.

  “Won’t he see you bug the place if there are cameras?” Tulip finally joined the conversation. I could imagine Bumper and Agent Gabb having a good laugh at my being videotaped planting video or voice recorders in a room they were already monitoring.

  “Someone else needs to plant the bug before I get there.” I had an epiphany. “I know who we could have used, but I think that is likely a dead end now.”

  “Arnold and his brother?” Tony was already a step ahead of me. I assumed at least the brother still had an invitation to the late night bacchanals at the studio, whether they had released his album or not.

  “Too bad we scared them off.”

  “Yeah.” Tony opened the contacts in his phone and dialed a number. He stood up and started to walk away with the phone pressed to one ear. “Good thing I had them tracked after we tried to scare the kid that day. Leave it to me.”

  “Is this when I offer my professional advice about Amanda’s situation?” Tulip had joined Amanda and me on our nightly club rounds a couple of times and they seemed to get along well, but I could always sense Tulip’s reservations. I wanted to write this off as her being an overly protective sister afraid I would get my heart broken by a beautiful movie star. “I would be willing to bet that Agent Gabb will find a way to implicate Amanda in something if you press Bumper too hard. You need to look for a way to get Bumper to confess to the blackmail and murder and to implicate Gabb. First, though, you need to find out if what that dog handler told you about Amanda’s assistant is true.”

  “Well, then, let’s pay them a visit.” I sighed and stood up. I politely moved Tulip’s chair away from the table and looked about for Tony, but he was not to be seen. I left word with his sous chef that we had gone to see Amanda and I would check with him after the bistro closed.

  There was another thing I had been meaning to ask Tulip about, and walking to Amanda’s seemed like the best, even if somewhat inappropriate, time to bring up Katie Reilly.

  “The prosecutor on Cisco’s case says she knows you,” I said as casually as I could.

  “We work together on the war crimes investigation. She got a divorce last year. Her ex owns some private security firm,” Tulip said and gave me grin that let me know she thought my interest was outside of work parameters.

  “Would I be wrong if I accused you and Avery of making sure she was assigned to the case for some reason?”

  “Oh, no. You are absolutely right,” Tulip freely admitted. “I just think that you are a local boy and you should probably be dating a local girl. You can keep dragging Amanda around town but she just is never going to ever understand things like Chalmations or the Skank Bank.”

  “All the same, I think I can worry about my own love life.”

  “I’d rather you worried about yours than mine,” Tulip said before we let the subject drop.

  THIRTY TWO

  Georgia greeted us at the elevator in a wisp of a sundress. I introduced my sister and took my first good look at Georgia. She was not unattractive; but her face showed a hint of hardness around its child-like qualities. She had lovely brown eyes and her dark brown hair was cut close to her shoulders. She was in her late twenties and looked physically fit, but I guess chasing after a seven year old would do that for any person. It was difficult to see her as the person Cisco wanted me to see.

  Georgia was surprised that I had arrived without Amanda having previously told her I was even coming, and now she seemed conflicted on whether or not to allow me here unannounced. She was further thrown off by my being accompanied by a female she didn’t recognize.

  “It's official business if that helps.”

  “Miss Amanda is in the television room.” Georgia led the way.

  Amanda was sitting on a sectional sofa with Parker. They were watching an animated movie that had the young boy laughing. Amanda started to invite us to join them but then noticed that our stances indicated this was not a purely social visit. Georgia returned to the room with a bowl of chips and took a seat on the opposite side of Parker as Amanda excused herself and came to us.

  “Got a minute?” I asked after she stepped up and gave me a peck on the cheek and said hello to Tulip. She did not try to hide her growing concern.

  “Would either of you like a beer, or something stronger maybe? Maybe just a big hug?”

  “The hug, definitely, but in a minute. We need to discuss some new evidence in the case. There are some difficult questions I need to ask and you need to answer honestly.”

  Amanda led us out to the pool and we took seats at the table. “You know I'll try.”

  “Here's th
e thing. There’s a guy in police custody who is trying to make a deal on Biggie’s murder that implicates Georgia, and by extension you, in planning it.”

  “Why would he tell you a lie like that?” Amanda displayed almost equal signs of anger and disbelief that I would not automatically defend her against such wild accusations.

  “The man has little reason to make up anything he can’t prove. He did not say that you knew this was the nature of the arrangement. What I need is to know everything I can about your assistant, good or bad. I know you met her in rehab, and that is a bad enough place to start.”

  Amanda clutched my arm and pulled her legs under her before she began to speak in a very hesitant manner, choosing her words as if they were footsteps in a mine field.

  “Her name isn’t Georgia,” Amanda admitted. “We call her Georgia because that’s where she used to go when she ran away from home. Her name is Tanya. Tanya Lansing, and she’s my cousin.”

  “So you’ve known her a lot longer than since rehab,” I said as calmly and flatly as I could. I unconsciously begun to lean away from her as she told her story. I took a breath and calmed myself down, but found I needed to express my own anger and sense of betrayal that Amanda had not volunteered anything about this before now. Mostly I hated knowing that Cisco had likely been more truthful than Amanda until now.

  “My whole life,” Amanda shrugged and looked at me for some sort of reassurance that simply wasn’t there this time. “She turned up on my doorstep right out of high school. She was going to make it big like I did. Only she didn’t. She wound up dating a member of one of the gangs out there that push drugs and guns. She came to me one day and said she was scared. She said she had seen some things she shouldn’t have and wanted to get away.”