But here he was in an election year, and the primaries were unusually early, due to anticipated irregularities. Armand had to find it inside himself to finesse the oily bastards who were bent on suckling from the fat teats of the body politic. It seemed to Bettencourt that this year's candidates were worse than usual, and that was saying something in a state where politics and criminal behavior had been more or less synonymous since the days of Huey Long. The Kingfish was a pioneer of sorts; he set the tone for all that followed, teaching future generations of disciples how to realize their dreams, be all that they could be, and during his tenure graft had been refined to an elusive art form.
Still...
Gut instinct made him want to go with Elmo Breen. Breen was a lifelong veteran of gutter politics and had the morals of an alley cat, disguised by oily charm. He had started out with the Sicilians, in Marcello's pocket, but the changing times had prompted Breen to look for sponsorship among the nativeborn. For the past ten years or so he had been snuggling up to leaders of the Cajun outfit, kissing major ass at any given opportunity. He was a pro who asked no questions and provided value for the money he received, dodged nasty questions with the flexibility of a sidewinder and never let his patrons down.
Unless, of course, he saw the chance to cut himself a better deal.
It was an iron-clad rule of Armand Fortier's, with which Merle Bettencourt agreed, that you could never really know what the stupid voters might decide to do once they were shut up in the polling booth and confronted with a list of names. That being true, it only made good sense to have friends on both sides in any given contest, just in case. No matter how the dice came up, that way, the outfit couldn't lose.
Which brought him back to Reverend Rockwell. The TV preacher was a hopeless ego-tripper, like so many of his colleagues, with a penchant for insisting that his words were Jesus Christ's. Whether the Rock believed his own spew or not, Merle Bettencourt had no idea, nor did he give a damn. Old Rockhead was amusing in his way, but he could also be a liability in public office if his fire-and-brimstone calls for cleaning up the state were taken seriously. As it was, however, Bettencourt had learned enough about the pastor that he felt he could relax.
Rockwell was living, breathing proof of Romans chapter three, verse twenty-three, where it declared that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Not that the pastor was a womanizer, pedophile or any suchlike kinky specimen; in fact, there was no solid evidence that he engaged in sex of any kind, or ever had. He didn't drink or play around with drugs, as far as Bettencourt could tell, nor did he squander cash on games of chance. There were suspicions-at the FCC, the IRS and elsewhere-that he might be skimming more than his reported salary from JBN, and there was no real doubt that he had flouted campaign finance laws, but that was small potatoes when you got down to it, hardly worth the cost of an investigation, much less months or years in court to prosecute and maybe see him wriggle off the hook.
No, Bettencourt had finally decided, Reverend Rockwell's great sin was pride, a driving need to lord it over others with his stern self-righteousness and tell the whole damn world how it should live. His TV network was a vehicle for self-promotion, plain and simple, with the holy smoke screen dazzling Rockwell's simpleminded followers. The pastor spoke to them in tongues, which sounded more like bullshit baby talk to Bettencourt. He dubbed the ones who sent him money on a monthly basis "soul survivors." Stupid puns were something of a trademark with the Rock, in fact. He had been known to call the money sent in by his TV flock "hellfire insurance," and sufferers from terminal disease-who somehow lacked the faith required for Reverend Rockwell to heal them of their ailments-were harangued to "cram for finals" by enrolling in a cut-rate Bible correspondence course. At one point, early in his televangelism days, he had sold tiny bits of rock and concrete swept up from construction sites and advertised as chippings from the Rock of Ages.
Bettencourt admired that kind of gall, and it had been no great surprise when Rockwell's campaign put out discreet but urgent feelers to the Cajun Mafia. The pastor knew of Elmo Breen's connection to the mob, and while it suited him to blast his opposition as a crook and friend of crooks, Rockwell also knew that big-time money was required to win the statehouse. Even with the Jesus Broadcast Network pumping covert thousands into his campaign, he needed more, as much to fox the watchful Feds as to defray his costs. Of course, the Rock couldn't be seen with Bettencourt or any of his Cajuns, but that didn't stop his bagmen from soliciting, collecting and transporting better than a million dollars from the mob to Rockwell's primary campaign.
That kind of money came with certain obligations stamped into the greenbacks like a hidden watermark. In public, Rockwell continued to denounce corruption and the men behind it, promising a swift return to "ancient family values" if he was elected governor, but in the meantime he had reached an understanding with his covert benefactors. If he won-and there was still no guarantee, despite the extra million in his war chest-Rockwell would keep his campaign promises by going through the motions of a shake-up, mostly concentrated in Baton Rouge. There would be raids, investigations, show trials and convictions, but he promised to avoid disturbing his supporters any more than might be absolutely necessary. If the Cajun mob saw fit to offer scapegoats-say, perhaps, their leading competition in the drug trade and illegal gambling, loan shark and extortion rackets-Reverend Rockwell's investigators would accept the sacrificial goats and let it go at that. Come next election year, they could negotiate new terms.
But now, with the primary just a few weeks off, both candidates had started calling Bettencourt at crazy hours, whining that the money wouldn't stretch to cover all their needs, asking if maybe there was something Bettencourt could do about the no-good rotten bastard who obstructed the path to the governor's mansion. Bettencourt would have been tickled pink to smoke them both, but those techniques had mostly gone out with the Kingfish. For the moment, all that Merle could do was lend a sympathetic ear and keep on filling briefcases with cash.
Whoever won the race would be presented with a bill, detailed and itemized. If he contested it or tried to bluff his way out of the game, Merle Bettencourt had tapes-both audio and hidden-camera video-that would be guaranteed to change the rebel's mind in nothing flat.
So much for politics. It took a measure of finesse, but Bettencourt was getting there, remembering to watch his temper and keep stroking the gargantuan ego that every politician carried like a monkey on his back. Some months earlier, in private, he had started browsing through the dictionary and thesaurus, peppering his speech with new words, cutting back on the profanity when there were ladies-as opposed to whores and bitches-in the room. Merle had begun to think that maybe he could fill old Armand's Gucci loafers, after all.
But there was still one problem to be dealt with, and he couldn't let it slide now that the wheels were turning, even if he didn't really give a shit about Armand's new trial. The Cajun godfather still had his loyalists in the family, enough of them to stir up holy hell if Bettencourt appeared to give the liberation effort less than everything he had.
Which meant, in turn, that he couldn't afford to let the final witness get away, no matter where he went to hide. And he couldn't afford to let a freak like Leon Grosvenor take him for a ride.
He needed something in the nature of an update from the wolf man, and he needed it right now. The trouble was that Leon didn't have a telephone or mailing address, living on the bayou like some kind of half-assed sideshow freak, away from other men. Which meant that Merle would have to reach out to him personally, even though he hated the idea.