Voodoo River

Milt Rossier screamed, "René! Goddamn it, you stop right there, René!" The old man's face was mottled, and he looked close to apoplexy.

René looked confused. LeRoy moaned, then rolled over and saw René staring down at him. "Don't just stand there, you dumb fuck, help me up."

René picked up LeRoy as if he were made of air. LeRoy hobbled to one of the lawn chairs, holding his side. "Got a goddamned stitch from d' run."

Pike said, "Exercise."

Bennett scowled. "You fuck. We'll see 'bout it, sometime, heh?"

Pike said, "Unh-hunh."

Rossier said, "Forget all that right now. We're talkin' business." He looked back at me. "What do you get out of this?"

"We get what Escobar pays you for the first delivery. Call it sixty thousand." Big lies are always easier.

"Bullshit."

"What's the bullshit, Milt? I'm brokering the deal. You would've kept going with Prima because you don't know any better, with him laughing behind your back. I've figured it out for you, and I've set it up. Your money doubles right away, and for this service, Joe and myself get exactly one week's take. After that it's all yours. You recoup in two weeks over what you were making from Prima." I gestured to Joe Pike. "Seems fair to me, Joe. How about you?"

Pike nodded. "Fair."

You could see Milt Rossier working it through, thinking about all that free money just for giving the spics a place to dock their boats. Convincing himself. That's the way the best cons work, they convince themselves. He said, "Frank Escobar, huh?"

I said, "Let me give you a couple of pointers, Milt. Two a head is top end, so don't start thinking you can get Prima to pay more. Frank is looking for what we call exclusivity here, and he will want to make sure that Donaldo is permanently out of the picture. Do we understand each other?"

"Unh-hunh."

"Frank wants you to let Prima bring in another load, only this time we'll all be out there at the pumping station together. Prima won't know about Frank and Frank's people, of course, because if he did, he wouldn't show. When he shows, Frank wants to pay him back personally, you see?"

Milt Rossier was shaking his head. "He don't need me there for that."

"Yeah, Milt, he does. Frank figures that if you'll sell out Prima, you'll sell out him, too, so you guys are going to have to make a marriage out there. No marriage, no two grand per. Two hundred forty thou every month, Milt. Prima won't be going home, but everybody else lives happily ever after."

Milt Rossier was thinking about it.

I gave him the phone number that Ramon del Reyo had given me. "I'm giving you a number to call. Call it if you want, or not. Up to you. It's not Escobar, but it's his people. If you're interested, check out if the deal is real. If not, blow it off. Your choice."

He took the little slip and looked at it. "What's to keep me from cutting you out?"

"Milt, you don't live in a fortress. You cut us out, you're over."

Pike twitched the.357.

LeRoy Bennett said, "Oh. Yeah."

Milt Rossier stared at Pike for a time, then glanced over at LeRoy. LeRoy was feeling a little better, but his eye was swelling where Pike had hit him. It probably didn't inspire confidence. Rossier said, "I've gotta think on it. How can I let you know?"

I told him where we were staying in Baton Rouge, and then Pike and I started back around the house. Milt Rossier called after us. "Hey."

We turned back.

Rossier said, "Podnuh, if either of you ever pull a gun on me again, you'd best use it."

I smiled at him. "Milt, if we pull a gun on you again, we will."

CHAPTER 34

W hen we got back to Baton Rouge I called Jodi Taylor's room from the lobby and got no answer. The desk clerk told me that she had checked out sometime in the early afternoon and that she had left neither note nor message. He said that she seemed distraught. Hearing that she had gone created an empty feeling in my chest, as if I had somehow left a job unfinished and, because of it, had performed beneath myself. I said, "Well, damn."

Pike said, "It's a good night. Clear. I'm going for a run." The lobby was empty except for Pike and myself and the clerk. Desultory voices leaked from the bar. "Come with me."

"Give me a chance to make some calls."

He nodded. "Meet you out front."

We rode up to our rooms, and I changed into shorts and running shoes and then called Lucy. I told her what had happened with Escobar and Rossier and that there was nothing left to do except wait and see if Rossier would go for it. I asked her if she'd heard from Jodi Taylor. Lucy said, "Yes. And from Sid Markowitz. Sid is saying that they'll sue. I'm not so sure that Jodi wants that, but she sounds upset and confused."

"Did she say anything about Edith Boudreaux?"

"No."

Neither of us spoke for a time, and then Lucy said, "Studly?"

"Yes, ma'am?"

"Ben's going to bed at ten. You could come over and we could neck in the car."

"Pike and I are going for a run. It's been a helluva day."

She sighed. "Just so you know."

"I knew there was a reason I called you."

We hung up and I phoned Jo-el Boudreaux next. I told him exactly what I had told Lucy, and when I was done he said, "Did they go for it?"

"We'll see. Rossier will dig around to see if we're legit, and when he finds out we have something working with Escobar, he'll decide."

"Okay. Then what?"

"He'll call me here. When he calls, I call Escobar. We won't have much time, so you have to be ready."

"I can get my guys in five minutes. Bet your ass on that one, podnuh."

"Whatever."

Pike was waiting out on the cement drive at the hotel's entry, stretching his hamstrings. I joined him, bending deep from the hips until my face was buried between my knees, then sitting with my legs in a great wide V and bending forward until my chest was on the cement. After a day spent mostly driving, and with the tension of dealing with criminal subhumans, it felt good to work my muscles. Maybe I wasn't down about Jodi Taylor after all. Maybe I had merely grown loggy from a lack of proper exercise and was in serious need of oxygenation. Sure. That was it. What's bailing out on a client compared to proper physical conditioning?

Pike did a hundred pushups, then flipped over and lay with his legs straight up against the wail and did a hundred situps. I did the same. The kid from the front desk came out and watched, standing in the door so he could keep an eye on the desk. He said, "Man, you guys are flexible. Goin' for a run?"

"That's right."

"Gotta be careful where you run. We got some bad areas."

I said, "Thanks."

"I'm not kidding. The downtown isn't great. Any direction you go, you're gonna run into the blacks."

Pike said, "I think I hear your phone."

The kid ducked inside, then reappeared shaking his head. "Nah. Must've been something else."

As my muscles warmed, the tension began to loosen and fall away like ice calving from a glacier and falling into the sea.

The kid said, "They say we're one of the top ten most dangerous cities in the country." He seemed proud of it.

I said, "We'll be careful."

Pike said, "Let's get going before I hit this twerp."

We ran south along the street that paralleled the levee, then up the little rise past the old state capitol building and then east, away from the river. The night air was warm, and the humidity let the sweat come easily. I concentrated on my breath and the rhythms of the run and the commitment needed to match Pike's pace. The run became consuming in its effort, and the focus needed to endure it was liberating. The downtown business area quickly gave way to a mix of businesses and small, single-family homes. Black. We ran along a major thoroughfare and the traffic was heavy, so we stayed on a narrow sidewalk as much as possible. The blocks were short and the cross-streets were numbered, and each time we crossed one you could get a glimpse of the lives in the little neighborhoods. We passed African-American kids on skateboards and bicycles, and other African-American kids playing pepper in the streets or tackle football on empty lots. They stopped as we passed and watched us without comment, two pale men trekking swiftly along the edge of their world, and I wondered if these were the areas the desk clerk had been talking about. As we ran, Pike said, "You did your best for her."