Gator Aide (26 page)

Hunky glared at me.

“No. He ain’t no leader. Buddy’s the leader. Schuess wants to be the leader. But he ain’t our leader.”

This was obviously a sore point. I decided to poke around and open it up. “I don’t think he should be the leader either. After all, this is America, so why should a German think he has the right to come in and take over an American group?”

Hunky warmed to the topic. “That’s what I say. You know, this Kraut comes here telling us all about how powerful his group is over in Germany, and how they’re getting the upper hand. Well then, how come he suddenly has to leave and come over here? Huh? We don’t need the kinda trouble that he got in over there.”

The best thing about Hunky was that once he got worked up and rolling, he generally had a hard time stopping himself. “What kind of trouble did he get into back there? Did the members of his group kick him out?”

“Shit, Porter. The police bombed their headquarters. So Schuess is laying low over here for a while. But all the Kraut cares about is our money. Says it’s all one big brotherhood, and how we should be helping them out. I say bullshit. I don’t see no one helping us out any over here.”

The information matched what I’d read in Valerie’s clipping. “And how are you supposed to get all this money for him and his group?”

Hunky’s eyes glazed over, aware that he’d given away more than he should have. “I don’t know, Porter. I don’t go to them meetings much anymore. I’m too busy trying to keep food on my table, thanks to you.”

“Where’s your meeting place, Hunky?”

His eyes headed up the road, and for a moment I had the uneasy feeling we weren’t totally alone. “I can’t tell you that. It changes all the time. We don’t stick to one spot.”

“We have a deal. You don’t give me this information, and the deal is off. It’s your decision, but I know for a fact that Trenton is home today.”

“Jesus Christ, Porter! No wonder you’re still single. You don’t know when to stop twisting a man’s balls.”

“I guess it’s just one of those things my mother forgot to teach me. Make up your mind now, Hunky. I haven’t got all day.”

“All right. I can tell you one place. As I said, I don’t go much to the meetings no more. ” Pulling at his pants, Hunky leaned against the truck as he looked around. “Buddy’s got a place, a hunting camp they use for meetings. It’s right outside Morgan City on Bayou Maringouin. And don’t ask me how to get there, ’cause I don’t know. You gotta have a boat, and you gotta know the swamp. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Thanks, Hunky.” I climbed down from the pickup and walked toward my own wreck of a car. I already knew the man who could take me to Bayou Maringouin when the time was right.

“And I’m not the one who hit you neither, Porter!”

“I know that, Hunky.”

As I turned my car around, I saw Hunky kick his flat tire hard, as though he was wishing it were me.

Stopping by the Central Grocery
long enough to dash in and grab a muffuletta sandwich for lunch, I made it home just after noon. The mail had already arrived and my mailbox slot was jammed wide open, a thick manila envelope having been rammed tightly inside. Cursing the U.S. Postal Service under my breath, I struggled to get the envelope out. The one time I’d managed to get hold of the mailman, I’d asked if he could deliver my mail so that it didn’t look as if it had been shipped in from Beirut. I’d paid dearly for that. Since then, everything I received appeared to have been put through a wringer.

Eating my sandwich straight out of its wrapper, I tore open the envelope to find a videotape. It had been packed without any note as to what it was. For a moment, I wondered if the mailman had been playing musical mailboxes again, purposely stuffing Terri’s mail in my slot. Not owning a VCR myself, I knew no one who would have sent it to me. Postmarked from New Orleans and marked to my attention, no return address had been given, leaving me without any kind of a clue. I grabbed the keys to Terri’s apartment and headed downstairs.

Rocky mewed and launched into commando mode as I let myself in, attacking me from behind to land squarely on my back. Clinging tightly as I tried to push him off, he raked into my skin with his claws. It was only when I finally gave up that he loosened his grip and climbed onto my shoulder. Rubbing his head against my cheek, he purred loudly into my ear—like most men once they’ve gotten their own way.

Walking into Terri’s apartment was always like entering a museum of the exotic and strange. The hallway was cluttered with charcoal portraits of dead movie stars, and a hand-painted border ran across the top of each wall. Displaying a slight variation on the Kama Sutra, all the figures were male in a variety of acrobatic positions. In the living room was a photographic history of Terri, from the obligatory pose as a baby lying naked on a lambskin rug, to his earliest days as a hoofer. Autographed photos featured him in wacky poses with Liza Minelli, Bernadette Peters, Cher, and his idol, Tommy Tune. Reviews of his one-man show on Bourbon Street were framed on the wall, as was a poster of himself dressed as Marlene Dietrich from her movie,
The Blue Angel
. Small sculptures of male nudes, always well endowed and minus the head, were artfully placed about the room.

I turned on the VCR, pushed the tape in, and settled back into the black leather couch. Rocky made himself at home, rolling up into a tight ball of fur on my lap. The first image appeared, looking like an old black-and-white B-movie. What I took to be a barren landscape slowly evolved into the back of a man’s head, as bald and smooth as a ball bearing. Turning around to face the camera, Hillard Williams was caught in a most casual pose. Picking his nose, he appeared oblivious to his surroundings, which clearly weren’t part of his home. Even more interesting, Hillard was totally nude and seemed unaware that he was being filmed as he sat down on a couch. The focus grew sharper and a table appeared in the background. Chained to one of the metal legs was Hook. After a moment, another figure wandered into frame, the stout torso of a man covered with dark, shaggy hair. Looking like some creature who had lagged behind in the evolutionary process, the figure walked around and sat down to join Hillard. Though the profile of the man’s face was slightly blurred, the silhouette was oddly familiar. Pushing Rocky off my lap, I leaned forward hoping to get a better view. With the nub of a cigar clenched tightly between his teeth, a neck the thickness of a freshly cut sequoia, and a crew cut that would have done a marine proud, Captain Connie Kroll turned toward the camera and froze as though he were posing for a mug shot.

I pressed freeze frame and stared at the two upstanding pillars of the New Orleans community, already able to guess what was about to take place. As I turned the tape back on, a mass of dark, wavy hair filled the lens. A jolt of recognition ran through me as the body of Valerie Vaughn sashayed into view. It was startling to see her alive, having first viewed her as a mutilated and bloodless corpse. Dressed in high-heeled boots and black leather gloves with a thin gold chain at her waist, she planted herself in front of the two men with a whip curled loosely in her hand. She unfurled it with a snap of her wrist, and Hillard ejected off the couch like a spent bullet and onto his knees at her feet. Valerie excelled in the role of dominatrix, debasing the city’s two most powerful men.

Like a bad porno film, Hillard and Kroll took turns performing one “lewd and lascivious act” after another. Illustrating the very thing Hillard was preaching against and that Kroll had taken an oath to obstruct, the tape was pure dynamite, capable of blowing both men’s careers to smithereens. At one point, Valerie turned her back on her two companions to wink at the camera and, for a moment, I felt sure that wink had been meant for me. A chill ran through me as if Valerie had lunged out of her grave and reached in to twist at my soul.

Rewinding the tape to her entrance, I watched the performance again, slowing the action as she turned to the camera so that we stared at each other once more, conspirators in her secret. The perfect tool for blackmail, the tape could have been how she ended up owning the diamond necklace. It might also have been the cause of her death. It was obviously one of the reasons why Connie Kroll had closed off a murder investigation to all but a select few.

The tape ended, but Valerie’s image remained seared in my mind. Whoever sent it must have been Valerie’s cohort, the person who worked the camera. I thought back on everyone I had met so far, trying to figure out who it could be. I ended up drawing a blank. The tape raised more questions than it answered. If Valerie had used it as blackmail, it left me wondering if Hillard and Kroll had been her only two victims.

I also questioned why it had been sent to me at all. While it could very well be pointing in the direction of Valerie’s killer, it might also have been meant to derail Hillard’s election. Or perhaps Valerie’s accomplice was now worried for his own life. Whoever mailed the tape knew more about me than I did about them.

As a child of the sixties, I’d cut my teeth on news reports of Vietnam, the secret war in Cambodia, and the Watergate tapes. I had grown up with the likes of Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman, so I expected people in power to be dishonest more often than not. I felt like a fool for being surprised by any kind of corruption, whether it took place in the ranks of the New Orleans Police Department or involved a girl from the bayou.

Going back upstairs, I walked into my apartment, where the red light on the answering machine beeped with steady precision. A message had been left by Santou. While I was pleased at hearing from him so soon after last night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. It was a feeling I’d had ever since discovering the rosary beads inside Vaughn’s apartment. Terri put it down to my fear of yet another failed relationship, but it was more than that. The rosary was an exact match of the one Santou had given me the night I’d gone out with him. And while my heart didn’t want to believe there was any connection, my gut instinct told me the coincidence was just too great. I wanted to trust Jake. But for the moment, I couldn’t. Besides, for all I knew, Santou was also aware of the tape’s existence and anxious to get his hands on it for his own reasons.

For the time being, I would confide in no one, and that included Charlie Hickok. He’d frozen me out of the case; I saw no reason to run to him with every bit of information I found. I wanted to work on my own for now. If and when I needed his help, I’d be sure and let him know. It was the same arrangement he had laid down to me.

Playing the tape back, I listened to Santou’s message a second time. The good news was that he had managed to track down Global Corporation. With its base in New York and a subsidiary company in Germany, the owner was listed as one Frank Sabino, with Hillard as chief executive officer. Buddy Budwell headed up the board of directors. The list of goods they dealt in ran the gamut from alligator skins to rip-offs of designer jeans to the buying and selling of diamonds.

The bad news was that Dolores Williams was in temporary residence at his precinct. Having been caught breaking into Valerie Vaughn’s apartment early this morning, she had been slapped with a charge of first-degree murder.

Chaos reigned as usual as I made my way down the halls of the precinct. Detectives dressed up as pimps headed out to work, while pimps that had just been arrested tried to pass themselves off as detectives in an attempt to sneak out the door. Santou had left word to steer clear of him if I made the trip over. Up until now, Dolores’s arrest had been kept quiet, with few outside the department—or even within—aware of the fact. If the press got whiff of the news, it would blow up into a front-page scandal.

While I wasn’t concerned about the effect on Hillard’s campaign, I didn’t need to be spotted by Kroll. By now, I had an inkling of just how dangerous the man could be. Getting on his bad side was something I’d try my best to avoid. Santou had suggested we have as little contact inside the police department walls as possible, and that suited me fine.

I stopped to ask a clerk directions to the holding cells, and a shock of white hair in the distance caught my eye. Gunter Schuess quickly slipped into a room as the door was shut behind him. The office belonged to none other than Captain Connie Kroll. It seemed Gunter had become Hillard’s liaison in more areas than just foreign affairs. He was probably here to clean up the mess—I felt relatively sure that Kroll would be more than happy to oblige. The fact that Dolores had been arrested in the first place threw me for a loop. Besides Hillard’s apparent connection with Kroll, it was obvious that Dolores was no killer. The entire incident had the smell of a scam about it.

Getting back into Valerie Vaughn’s apartment had been easier than trying to work my way in to see Dolores. I found myself up against a sergeant who was hot and bored, and liked making me squirm. Thirty pounds overweight, he was the Southern version of Arnold Schwartzenegger gone to seed. In a fight against reality, he had pushed himself into clothes that were far too small. The buttons on his shirt pulled one way, while the buttonholes fought to go the other. The waistband on his pants was undone and folded over a belt that was barely holding on at the last notch. The sergeant sat at a desk facing the doorway and stared blankly at an empty crossword puzzle, his jaw chomping slowly up and down on a wad of bubble gum.

“I’m here to see Dolores Williams.”

“No can do, sugar.”

I pulled out my shield, hoping it might carry some weight. “I’m a federal agent with the Fish and Wildlife Service. This involves a case I’m investigating.”

“Don’t matter none to me, darlin’.”

“Would it be possible to at least tell Mrs. Williams I’m here?”

“Can’t do that for ya, honey.” Chewing on his pencil, the sergeant turned his attention back to the puzzle.

But I wasn’t willing to be that easily dismissed. I moved to the side of his desk and glanced down at the paper in front of him. The puzzle in the Sunday
New York Times
had been one of the things that had kept my mind functioning during my three-month stint of depression, where I had subsisted on eating Crackerjacks and sobbing at the zoo. Compared to that, this one was a breeze. Without thinking, I jumped in to help.