The Devil Always Collects

by John Moore

  I showed Mr. Swartz Sarah’s will and asked, “Is this will valid?”

  “Yes, any will entirely written, dated and signed by a person of sound mind is valid in Louisiana. The next step would be to open Sarah’s succession and probate the will,” he said.

  “What the hell does all of that mean?”

  “It means that we have to take it all to a judge. I’m afraid that beyond doing that, our hands will be tied by the ongoing lawsuit brought by Bayou Oil. I do see that Sarah had a life insurance policy in the amount of $250,000. If she named you as beneficiary, you’ll be able to collect the money outside the succession. That means Bayou Oil’s suit won’t affect your collection at all. That is, of course, if you are the named beneficiary,” Swartz said. “Alexandra, what we can do is file Sarah’s succession and get you appointed executrix of her estate. Then we can get the authority to open that safety deposit box at the bank of Cottonport in Marksville, Louisiana. You and a notary public will be able to look inside the box and examine its contents. The notary will take an inventory and file it in the court records.”

  “Get that process started right away,” I said. “It’s imperative I read and protect what’s in that safety deposit box!”

  I left Mr. Swartz’s office and headed to see Jess Johnson. She hadn’t gone to Sarah’s funeral and I wondered why. I wanted to tell her about Sarah’s will and everything else that had taken place since we last talked.

  I walked into her office and to my shock saw Bart Rogan seated in front of her. What the fuck? Why would that bastard be here? I turned to leave, and she stopped me.

  “Come in, Alexandra, Mr. Rogan was just leaving,” she said.

  He brushed past me quickly, not bothering to observe any pleasantries. He was pissed about something. I was hoping she’d stuck pins in the voodoo doll she kept in her office, and it was slowly killing him. No such luck.

  “What was that asshole doing here?” I asked.

  “He came to threaten me. He said if I didn’t back off of ACC, there would be hell to pay. He added that he could be a good friend if I would just let him help me,” she said.

  I rolled my eyes in total disgust and asked, “What did you tell him?”

  Jess gave me one of her famous wily smiles and said, “I told him he was the devil, and I didn’t deal with the devil. I told him I was too old and ornery to listen to threats from a two-bit bully like him. I pointed to the sign behind me: no way would I do nothing and let evil prevail. Oh yeah, I also said get the fuck out of my office!”

  “Good one, Jess,” I said. “Let me tell you what’s going on.”

  I proceeded to tell Jess everything. I told her about being run off of the road and finding Sarah’s will. I told her everything Gary Bennett said to me at the hospital. I even told her about what Swartz said about the lawsuit and opening Sarah’s succession.

  She asked, “How did your visit with Jenkins go? Was he able to talk much?”

  “It went OK,” I said. For some reason, I didn’t tell her about Sarah’s and Jenkins’ deal with Dan Broussard. Why besmirch Sarah’s memory more?

  “Let me tell you a little about Jenkins’ client Bayou Oil,” Jess said. “Years ago there was a young girl from Haiti who worked for him. He was seeing her on the side and got her pregnant. Sarah asked me to help get the girl back to her family in Haiti. I made some calls to the immigration department and got her clearance to travel. I lost track of her and her family after Hurricane Georges hit Haiti in 1998. I never learned whatever became of her or her child. That no good son of a bitch Broussard and his wife couldn’t have children, so they adopted a boy and named him Bob. Broussard’s wife is a drunken bitch and treated Bob poorly. He and Mandy Morris grew up together, and as soon as they were old enough they began partying and screwing anything with a pulse, spending daddy’s money. He’ll never amount to anything.”

  Holy shit, my second shocker of the afternoon. Jess has no idea that Bob Broussard was the Haitian lady’s baby. Sarah didn’t tell Jess her role in bringing the baby back to the U.S.

  My phone rang. It was Tom.

  “Something has come up, Alexandra. I need to see you now. I’m on my way to your place. I’ll meet you in 30 minutes,” he said.

  Chapter Twenty:

  Interpol

  Tom was parked outside my condo when I arrived. We met at my front door and he kissed me, his tongue exploring my mouth as one hand lightly cupped the back of my neck at the hair line. He smelled like salt water and fresh sweat and tasted like heaven. God, I’ll never get tired of that. When we sat at the table inside I realized I was exhausted.

  “You know the guy who shot Mark Stevens?” he asked.

  “Yes, I met him in court and visited his hospital room today,” I said. “His name is Gary Bennett.”

  “His brother, Mike, is a member of Roll. We have rented some of his boat company’s vessels on some our missions saving trapped sea turtles. Mike told me his brother came into some money recently. What’s more, his wife just got a cushy job with ACC. I think he took money to kill Mark.”

  “That makes perfect sense to me. It smells like Bart Rogan,” I said.

  “Wait, Alexandra, there’s more. One of the Colombian guys in ROLF said some guy with ACC was hooked up with the Colombian drug cartels. Their relationship goes way back to the 1980s. You have to be careful, those guys are heartless murderers.”

  I told Tom about being followed and run off the road on my way to Laplace. I described the Latin driver and what looked like a crawfish tattoo on his forearm. He freaked, the blood leaving his face and before he spoke.

  “If the tattoos were scorpions, those were Colombian cartel thugs. How did they know you would be going to the center? Who did you tell?” he asked.

  “No one,” I said.

  “Fuck,” he screamed and ran outside. I followed and found him under my car. He emerged with an electronic device in his hand.

  “Somebody’s put a tracker on your car,” he said. “These guys play for keeps.”

  “Holy shit, what do we do now?” I asked.

  “Time to call the cops,” he said.

  I picked up my phone and called Detective Demetre Baker. He asked me to come to his office the next morning. He sent a unit to park outside my house the rest of the night. Tom and I went to bed and held each other till we fell asleep.

  As morning’s first light broke through the windows, I couldn’t find Tom. He wasn’t in bed. I sprung to my feet to find him at the kitchen table writing in a journal.

  He saw me enter the room and beat me to the Keurig to get my coffee started. He looked at me lovingly and said, “Good morning, pretty girl. Did you sleep well?”

  “No, restless, thinking I was hearing things all night long, how about you?”

  “OK. Have a seat,” he lied as he handed me my coffee. “I’ve been up for a while thinking about how to best fight these slimy pigs. It occurred to me that like cockroaches, they can’t stand the light of day. As long as they can move around undetected, they will contaminate all they touch. Turn the lights on and they scurry for cover.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do, Tom,” I said a bit bumfuzzled as to why he didn’t acknowledge my efforts. And all this heavy shit before my second cup of coffee. I could see a great deal more training in his future. Wow, I thought, that’s the first playful thought I’ve had since Sarah’s death.

  “I know, babe, but you have to rely on other people to edit and publish what you discover. The process is too slow and cumbersome. You need a blog,” he said with a proud, broad smile on his face like he’d just discovered the cure for cancer.

  Did he just call me babe? And what a beautiful smile, “That’s not a bad idea. I need to run it by Jess first, but I can see how a blog could work.”

  “We, I mean the members of ROLF, have access to a large radar-equipped vessel. If Sarah’s
bank box contains the location of the sunken ACC barge, I can arrange for the ship to take us there. We’d have to be certain though. Wild goose chases are expensive and it would destroy me in the organization if we were wrong.”

  Fully awake now, with two cups of coffee in me, I said, “Excellent! I’ll look into starting a blog and you find out more about exactly what it will take to get the ship. You are amazing, Tom! Thank you for hanging in there with me.”

  He stood up, walked to my side of the table and ran his fingers through my hair, “Always, babe, Always.”

  I looked up at him, grinned and said, “We’ve got time for a quickie before I call Detective Baker.”

  Tom didn’t need a second invitation. He swooped me up and carried me to the bedroom. I love the lust and stamina of a healthy man in the morning.

  When my body could feel the effects of gravity again, I called Detective Baker. He asked me to get to the station by 10:00 AM.

  Tom and I were getting very close to each other. I felt safe with him. Some might say I didn’t really know him, but we connected with each other. I didn’t know where our thing was going, but for now, I loved it. I set out for the police station and Tom headed off to work.

  Police stations are interesting places. Controlled chaos best describes them. Certainly there are paperwork and bureaucracy but also a quasi-military structure. Most seem to ignore the command structure until challenged from within or without. Then everyone falls in line and executes as well structured unit.

  I navigated past the front desk and found my way to Detective Baker’s office. He was not alone. A well-kept Latina woman, wearing a black pants, white blouse, and mustard colored jacket sat next to him pouring through boxes of files. They each had laptops open next to them. The officer escorting me into the office knocked on the frame of the open door and both looked up at me.

  “Come in, Alexandra. I want you to meet Sophia Garcia,” Baker said. “She will be joining us today. Sophia is an Interpol agent. She is interested in how Sarah’s murder might be connected to other crimes she is investigating.”

  “Oh, hello,” I said a bit shocked and confused. “Interpol, the international organization that investigates crimes committed around the world, interested in Sarah’s murder. What is going on here?”

  Sophia, sensing my uneasiness, said, “May I call you Alexandra?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Alexandra, please walk with me to get a cup of coffee. In my country, Colombia, we drink coffee with everything,” she said as she stood up and headed toward the door.

  I walked with her down the hallway to a cop kitchen, coffee pots with every type of coffee imaginable – medium roast, dark roast, chicory – and a refrigerator full of flavored creamers. There were two microwaves and vending machines with neatly wrapped packages masquerading as healthy food. The officers’ physiques betrayed their food choices. The trash overflowed with potato and corn chip bags, not to mention the cookie, cake, and candy bar wrappers. Sophia and I made small talk. She asked me how I liked living in New Orleans. And I found out that she was born in Colombia and her father had been a policeman killed by narcos in the 1990s. So much sadness in her life. She was dressed detective casual with a conservative, her black slacks tight around her legs. As she took her coat off I saw her outfit was accented with the traditional wide gun-belt, holster on the right side, weapon snapped in and handcuffs on the left. Her face seemed softer than you expect, given her job.

  We returned to Detective Baker’s office with our coffee, and he said, “Inspector Garcia and I have spoken to the state trooper who was on the scene of your wreck on the bridge. Alexandra, we think you may have been targeted by some of the people Sofia is investigating. Tell us in your own words what happened.”

  I told them about being cut off and nearly sliding through the bridge rail into the swampy waters. They asked if I could recognize the driver if I saw him again. That he looked Latin and had a scorpion tattoo was the best description I could give. I didn’t really get a good enough look at him to pick him from a line-up. When I told them about my encounter with Bart Rogan at Mark Stevens’ bail hearing, Sophia perked up.

  “He knew your name,” she asked.

  “Yes and that I was a reporter,” I added.

  “I see he’s up to his old tricks,” she said. “Barton Rogan is a human predator who likes to get his hands dirty. This whole episode has his fingerprints all over it. Let me give you a little history of Rogan. You may know he is under indictment in India. The media reported the charges stemmed from his involvement in the aftermath of the UCIL disaster in Bophal, India. The Indian government secretly indicted Rogan for an experimental program he conducted using an unapproved pesticide, called Organo. This pesticide is from the family of organophosphate pesticides that attack the nervous system in the same manner as sarin gas. When used moderately, those pesticides aren’t deadly. Lab tests revealed that Organo isn’t stable. When Organo combines with a large number of herbicides, it transforms into a deadly cancer-causing formula. The effects in India were devastating. The Indian government tried to extradite Rogan but the U.S. Justice department blocked the attempt.”

  “Why would the Justice Department protect Rogan?” I asked

  “That question is not so easily answered,” Sophia replied. “ACC is a powerful international company with strong political ties with governments around the world. Though Rogan isn’t an employee of ACC, he is protected by them. He owns a company called RCM, which is an acronym for Rogan Crisis Management. RCM is chartered in the Turks and Caicos Islands and banks in Switzerland. ACC has an ongoing contract with RCM to provide crisis management services. In plain language, Alexandra, Rogan fixes embarrassing problems for ACC so they don’t have to get their hands dirty. Rogan made a mistake in India. He was the president of the company launching Organo. That’s what got him indicted. ACC used their political influence to protect Rogan and he kept quiet about their nefarious activities.”

  Detective Baker asked, “So, Inspector Garcia, how does all of this tie into Sarah’s murder?”

  “Sarah was on the trail of a barge that had been scuttled in the Gulf of Mexico. ACC used the barge to transport glyphosate to Colombia as part of the United States’ war on drugs. The deadly herbicide was being sprayed on fields to eradicate coca plants. ACC supplied the glyphosate. My sources say that Sarah had evidence that the glyphosate or something worse was dumped in the Gulf, violating international pollution laws. She recently revived her investigation. Sarah reportedly had a video statement from the tugboat’s captain that Barton ordered the dumping himself. Sarah was looking for the sunken barge to prove that it once contained glyphosate. Interpol believes Barton used his connections with the drug cartels to stop Sarah and is now ferociously searching for the recording she possessed. He will kill anyone who gets in his way.”

  “So, you believe it was Barton’s drug cartel thugs that tried to run me off of the bridge?” I asked Sophia.

  “No doubt. The scorpion tattoos are their body tags,” she said. “Rogan is a very rich man. He owns a G500 jet he flies around the world in. We believe he picks up his cartel assassins in Colombia and flies them into the country to do his dirty work and then flies them back to Colombia. Usually, no one ever questions who is on his plane. He dresses them in business suits and gives them false passports and cover stories in case he is ever challenged.”

  “The task force placed cameras throughout the French Quarter to catch the serial killer,” Baker said. “One camera picked up Sarah walking toward an alley. The camera lost sight of her and didn’t detect her ever leaving the alley. The same camera filmed a car leaving the alley about 15 minutes after Sarah entered. We rewound the video to 20 minutes before Sarah went into the alley and saw a Cadillac Escalade enter. The video captured an image of the driver’s face. We ran facial recognition software and identified the driver as Jesus Gonzales aka ‘El Serpiente,’�
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  Sophia piped up, “That means ‘The Serpent’ in Spanish. He is Rogan’s favorite hit man. We have been after him for years. Interpol believes he is Sarah’s real killer. We think he intentionally mimicked the Quarter Killer’s M.O. to cover his tracks.”

  “He got most of it right too,” Baker added. “He screwed up placing the wrong type of paper in her mouth. Dead giveaway to me. Why would the real Quarter Killer change his M.O. in that way? I can see him changing the way he subdues his victim, but not changing his signature. For some reason the paper doll is important to him. No, Sarah was killed by a copycat killer. Alexandra, we also think Gonzales is the man with the scorpion tattoo who tried to push you into the swamp.”

  Inspector Garcia and Detective Baker shared their contact information with me so I could get in touch immediately if I needed to. They offered police protection and tried to persuade me to cancel my plans to investigate Rogan. I declined the second offer without hesitation and the first one because I figured it would slow me down.

  I left Baker’s office in a state of complete shock. Sure I was scared. An international criminal with serious bank was trying to have me killed using his drug cartel assassin. Who wouldn’t be a little shaky? But my underlying feeling was rage. This bastard killed my mother, killed Sarah and now was trying to kill me. Fuck him! Fuck him! Fuck him!

  I called Tom on my way home to fill him in on what I had learned at the meeting with Garcia and Baker. He asked me to meet him at Cafe Du Monde. Coffee sounded great to me. When Tom saw me, he wrapped his strong arms around me and once again I felt safe. He held me for what felt like hours but was probably only 30 seconds. I needed that hug. We got our coffee au lait and beignets, and Tom chose a table in a corner against a wall. We sat next to each other so we could survey anyone approaching us. When I first met Tom, he seemed like the strong silent type. I learned he was warm and loving once he allowed me inside his walls.