Fat Tuesday (25 page)

Burke stopped eating and looked at him quizzically.

"She told me her name."

"She's awake?"

"In and out."

Burke mopped up the last of the gravy with a crust of bread, actually surprised to see that his plate was empty. The unidentifiable meat had been incredibly tasty, but then Dredd was as good with seasonings as he was with the roots and herbs that went into his home remedies.

Scooting his empty plate aside, he reached for his coffee."I don't think she stirred all night."

"The effects of the sedative began to wear off while I was applying more salve to her wounds. I dosed her up again. She should sleep through most of the day."

"When can I move her?"

Dredd had finished his own meal by now and went in search of cigarettes He found a pack, lit one, took a drag, and held the smoke in his lungs for an extended time."Not that it's any of my business, but what the hell are you doing with Pinkie Duvall's wife?"

"I kidnapped her."

Dredd harrumphed, took several more drags on his cigarette, and picked bread crumbs from his beard. At least Burke hoped they were bread crumbs."Any particular reason why?"

"Vengeance." Burke related his story, beginning with the night Wayne Bardo tricked him into shooting Kev Stuart, and ending with their hair-raising escape from a mob of angry men."When I saw she was hurt, I thought of you first. I didn't know where the nearest hospital was, and we were only a few miles away from here. I know how you value your privacy. I hate like hell involving you, Dredd."

"Forget it."

"The thing is, I know I can trust you."

"You trust me, huh? Do you trust me enough to tell you like it is?"

Burke knew what was coming, but he motioned for Dredd to speak his mind.

'"You must've gone plumb crazy, Basile. The authorities could throw the book at you, but that threat's nothing compared to Duvall. Do you know who you're up against?"

"Better than you."

"So it doesn't bother you that Pinkie Duvall will gut you like a hog and leave your carcass for the buzzards?" Burke grinned wryly.

"Ouch."

Dredd, however, didn't find any humor in the remark. He shook his head with annoyance as he lit another unfiltered smoke."Before this is over, somebody will be dead."

"I'm aware of that," Burke said, no longer smiling."I'd rather it not be me, but if it is ..." He raised one shoulder eloquently.

"You've got nothing to live for anyway. Is that what you're trying to tell me? You killed your own man, your career is over, your marriage went to hell, so what's to live for. Does that about sum up your view of things?"

"Something like that."

"Bull ... shit." He divided the expletive into two distinct words as he spat a flake of tobacco off his tongue."Everybody's got something to live for, if it's nothing except to see another sunrise."

He leaned across the table and shook the cigarette at Burke's face as though it were a mother's remonstrative finger."You killed Stuart accidentally.

You quit the N.O.P.D, it didn't quit you. You had a miserable marriage. It was past time you got shed of that woman. I never did like her."

'"I didn't confide the details of my personal itfe with you so you could throw them back at me now."

"Well, tough tittie. I'm overstepping my bounds. I earned the privilege when you came busting in here last night and dumped a bleeding woman on me. Besides," he added grumpily, "I sorta like you, and I'd hate to see you get yourself killed."

His reproving expression turned softer, although compassion contrasted with his ogreish appearance."I know what I'm talking about Basile Believe me. Things can get fucked up real bad, but life is life, and dead is dead. Forever. It's not too late to cut bait and back out of this thing."

Dredd was one of the few men Burke truly respected, and he knew that his respect was reciprocated."Valid advice, Dredd. And I know you're well intentioned. But, whatever the consequences, I have to punish Wayne Bardo and Pinkie Duvall, or die trying."

"I don't get it. Why?"

"I told you why. For revenge."

Dredd stared hard at him."I ain't buying it."

"Sorry." Burke picked up his coffee mug and sipped, with that gesture closing the topic to further discussion.

Apparently Dredd saw the futility of arguing. Anchoring his cigarette in the corner of his lips, he stood and cleared their dishes off the table, tossing them into a metal sink."What're you going to do with her?"

"Nothing. I swear. It's my fault that she got hurt, and I hate like hell that it happened. I never intended to lay a hand on her. I wouldn't do that. For chrissake, I wouldn't."

Dredd turned his fuzzy head and shot Burke a pointed look.

"What?"

"You're protesting an awful lot to an innocent question."

Burke looked away from Dredd' wtwinkling eyes."This isn't about her, it's about him."

"Okay, okay, I believe you," Dredd said."All I meant was, where do you figure on stowing her while you're baiting Duvall? I'm guessing, of course. You are using her to bait a trap, right?"

"More or less. I'm going to keep her in the fishing cabin."

Burke used the cabin only once or twice a year, if he was lucky enough to get away for a few days. Whenever he did, he always stopped at Dredd's Mercantile to buy his food, beer, and bait.

Dredd's shop was off the beaten path, but to fishermen and hunters who knew their way through the labyrinth of bayous, it was a well known spot and a point of reference. Only one gravel road led to it. The primary form of transportation to and from it was by boat.

Dredd didn't make a lot of money, but he didn't need much. Most of his income was earned during alligator season. He hunted them, then sold the skins. He also did some taxidermy as a sideline.

"Who else knows about your cabin?" Dredd asked.

"Only Barbara, but she doesn't know where it is. She never went there with me, because she hated even the idea of it."

"Anybody else?"

"My brother, Joe, met me there a couple of times for a weekend of fishing. Not in a couple of years, though."

"You trust him?"

Burke laughed."My brother? Of course I trust him."

"If you say so. What about that Gregory character?"

"He's harmless."

"And you're a damn fool," Dredd said harshly."Supposing he gets lucky and finds his way out of the swamp before a cottonmouth gets him.

Supposing he starts to thinking about what Pinkie Duvall would do to him if he catches him. Supposing he figures he'll go to Duvall first and sell out your hide to save his."

"I'm not worried about that."

"Why not?"

"Because Gregory is a coward."

"He was brave enough to steal my pirogue and go into the swamp."

"Only because he's more frightened of me than he is of the elements.

He thinks I still might kill him for what he did at the Crossroads. I threatened to enough times, maybe he thinks I meant it. Anyway, he'll survive. He's lived a charmed life. When the swamp spits him back, he'll run as far and fast as he can. He won't go to Duvall."

"How do you plan to contact him?"

"Who, Duvall? You got it all wrong, Dredd. He'll contact me."

"How's he going to do that?"

"That's for him to figure out. In the meantime, I'm endangering you by staying here. So back to my original question: When can I safely move her?"

Doug Pat slowly lowered his feet from the corner of his desk and set them on the floor. At his elbow, his mug of coffee began to cool.

He reread the story three times.

It was an insignificant insert, the text using up no more than six inches of the Times Picayune's page twenty. It was a brief account of a fight that had broken out in a roadside cafe in Jefferson Parish.

Involved were two Catholic priests, the wife of a famed New Orleans attorney, and her bodyguard. According to a sheriff's office spokesman, the incident was resolved without any arrests being made.

Two aspects of this seemingly innocuous story attracted Pat's attention: How many famed New Orleans attorneys' wives had body guards?

Second, witnesses noted that one of the unidentified priests had a quirky habit of flexing his right hand.

Pat depressed a button on his intercom."Can you come in here a minute?"

In under sixty seconds, Mac Mccuen strolled in with his characteristic jauntiness."What's up?"

"Read this."

Pat pushed the newspaper across the desk and pointed out the story.

After reading it, Mac looked up."So?"

"So, do you know someone with a quirky habit of flexing his right hand?"

Mac lowered himself into the chair facing his superior's desk.

He scanned the story again."Yeah, but he for damn sure isn't a priest."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

"I told you about it, remember? A couple nights ago, he came to my house for dinner."

' "How did he seem?"

"The same old Basile."

"The same old Basile carrying the same old grudge against Pinkie Duvall?"

Mccuen glanced down at the newspaper."Oh shit."

"Yeah." Pat rubbed the top of his head as though worried about his spreading bald spot."Did Burke drop any hints about what he's been doing since he resigned?"

"He didn't say much. But, hey, he never did. Always played his hand close to his vest. All he said was that he planned to go away for a while and do some thinking."

"Alone?"

"That's what he said."

"Where?"

"Said he didn't know yet."

"Do you know how to contact him?"

"No." Mccuen laughed nervously."Look, Pat, this is crazy.

The guy with the funny hand action was a priest. And it doesn't specifically identify the woman as Duvall's wife. It couldn't be her.

Bodyguard or not, Duvall wouldn't let her within fifty yards of Burke Basile."

"True. They're sworn enemies."

"Even if they weren't. From what I've heard, she's a dish and a lot younger than Duvall."

Pat raised his eyebrows, signaling Mccuen to complete his thought.

"Well, Burke's the strong, silent type that women go nuts for.

He's no Brad Pitt pretty-boy, but Toni thinks he's attractive. I always figured it was his mustache that gave him sex appeal, but obviously he's got more than that going for him. Something that only broads "

"He shaved off his mustache?" Pat's stomach did a nose dive "Didn't I mention that?"

Pat stood and reached for his suit jacket hanging on the coat tree.

Mccuen was nonplussed."What's the deal? Where are you going?"

"Jefferson Parish," Pat answered over his shoulder as he rushed through the door.

Dirty gutter water soiled the tires of Bardo's car as he pulled up to the crumbling curb."This is it."

Pinkie looked at the building with distaste. It was the same caliber neighborhood, the same caliber flophouse in which he'd found Remy living with her mother and infant sister."Squalid" was an inadequate adjective.

He had been brainstorming all night, trying to identify the two kidnappers who'd masqueraded as priests. His underground network was humming with news of the abduction. He had offered a sizable reward to anyone who came forward with information.

During one of his repeated recounts of the incident, Errol remembered something previously forgotten."The guy calling himself Father Kevin was ready to hammer the other one himself. I heard him say something about jail."

"Jail?"

"Yeah. I can't remember his exact words on account of I was busy doing my duty and getting Mrs. Duvall out of there. Whatever he said made me think Father Gregory had been in jail for doing something like that before."

The bodyguard was so desperate to win back his favor that Pinkie wondered how reliable this information was. It was feasible that an ex-con with a grudge was trying to avenge a long-forgotten slight, but it was just as feasible that Errol was making it up in order to get his ass off the firing line. But Pinkie couldn't discount any clue, so he had one of his snitches in the N.O.P.D working up a list of repeat sex offenders.

A telephone company employee, who was working off a legal fee, was tracking the number on the business card bearing the Jenny's House logo, which Pinkie now knew was a fake. His secretary had checked it out, but apparently she'd been tricked by some very clever individuals.

Less than half an hour ago, when they received word that the number on the business card belonged to a pay phone in this building, Bardo had hastily assembled a team of four men, who had followed them here in another car.

Pinkie had insisted on riding along with Bardo. When these audacious priests died, Pinkie wanted to be looking them in the eye. Flushed with adrenaline and indignation, he alighted onto the littered banquet.

Bardo stationed two of the men at the front door and signaled the other two to go around to the back of the building in case the kidnappers tried to hustle Remy out a rear exit.

Pinkie and Bardo stepped over a wino sleeping in the recessed doorway and went inside. Pinkie had the odd feeling that he was being led, that he was doing exactly what the kidnapper wanted him to do.

Tracking the phone number had been too easy. For having planned such an elaborate kidnapping, the perpetrator shouldn't have overlooked something so elementary. It left Pinkie wondering if the oversight had been intentional.

On the other hand, he knew from experience that even the cleverest crooks got trapped by the stupidest mistakes.

To the left of the entrance was a reception desk, but no one was attending it. Bardo moved across the seedy lobby to the public telephone mounted on the wall and checked the number. He shook his head.

Pinkie motioned him upstairs.

They trod softly. When they reached the second-floor landing, they saw the telephone about halfway down a narrow hallway decorated with graffiti. The lighting was so dim that Bardo had to hold his cigarette lighter up to the cloudy plastic sleeve on the front of the telephone to read the number. He gave Pinkie the thumbs-up.

Pinkie's blood pressure soared. He hitched his chin toward the door at the end of the hallway. When Bardo's low command to open the door met with no response, he kicked it open. Inside was a man sprawled across a bed, deep in a drunken stupor. No Remy. They determined from his condition and the number of empty rye bottles surrounding him that he wasn't their culprit. Furthermore, he was pudgy, pink, and sixtyish, and didn't fit the description of either priest. The second room was empty, and bore no signs of recent occupation.