Gator Aide (29 page)

“Fuck you, Terri. You’d drag my business down.”

Terri got up and directed me out the door. It was then that I thought of the tape I’d seen that afternoon.

“Just one more question, Kitty. There were two men who used to solicit Valerie on a regular basis. I’m wondering if you might know either one of them.”

“Who’re the johns?”

“Connie Kroll and Hillard Williams.”

Kitty stared at me for a moment before shutting the door in my face.

I showed the tape of Valerie Vaughn to Terri that night as I dished out two platefuls of Chinese food from his favorite takeout. Rocky got a separate bowl filled with his own order of chicken chow mein. By the time the tape was finished, Terri had lost his appetite.

“What are you, crazy? You’re in over your head on this, Rach. Look at who you’ve got involved here. Forget the alligator. Forget Hillard Williams! Jesus, the entire N.O.P.D. is probably helping to cover this thing up. Kitty’s right: drop it. It’s not worth it. Besides, I don’t need to have my building torched.”

He was probably right, but I knew that didn’t make any difference. I had no intention of letting this case go. Not now. Not at this point.

“Who owns the Kit Kat Club, Terri? If you don’t tell me, I’ll find out anyway, so do me a favor and save me some time.”

Biting into an egg roll, he pulled out a shrimp and bent over to feed it to Rocky. His fingers dangled as the cat licked the grease from his hand. “From what you say, it’s a guy you’ve already met.”

My mind raced through the mental index cards of people I’d racked up on this case so far. None fit the part.

“Does Buddy Budwell strike a chord? Fat, sweats a lot, considers himself a pedigree Nazi? He owns the business. In fact, he owns a couple of clubs on the strip. From what I hear, that’s how Val got her job at the Doll House.”

I had a hard time imagining Buddy as the brains behind a chain of strip joints. In fact, it was hard for me to picture him anywhere outside of a swamp, surrounded by dead gators.

“Think about it, Rach. It’s a great way to launder money, along with his other businesses. Hell, the guy’s into everything. I hear he’s even got a fish packing house in Morgan City, and part ownership in a restaurant out that way.”

“Why would he need to launder money?”

“Jesus, Rach. He works in cash businesses. He probably juggles the money around from one place to the other. Word on the street is that the mob has its fingers in each one, as well.”

Terri surprised me. I hadn’t thought he paid attention to such things. “When did you start learning so much about Buddy Budwell?”

He grinned until the swelling in his face took on the proportions of a painted Buddha. “I had some free time to make a couple of calls the past few days. A lot of information floats around the strip if you know the right people to ask.”

It was no easy task picturing Terri as a supersleuth, lying on the couch dressed in his favorite fuchsia pajamas covered with naked boys. I picked at my egg foo yung.

“If I could only tie Valerie in with Hillard rock solid somehow. Why couldn’t he at least have paid her rent?”

Terri put his plate on the floor for Rocky to finish. “He probably did. But there’s no way you’re going to be able to prove that. Val always paid in cash.”

I heard my fork clatter against my plate without having felt it fall from my fingers. “How do you know that?”

Terri stared at me through swollen lids. “Well, for one thing, I rented an apartment from her landlady, Flo Henken, when I first moved here. The old bitch wouldn’t accept anything but cash. She said a check was no better than toilet paper, and she had plenty of that. Secondly, Val would never open a checking account. She couldn’t have balanced a checkbook. Besides, she got paid in cash, and that’s how she covered her bills.” Terri took a close look at me as I put my plate on the floor next to his. “Why? What’s the problem?”

“I questioned Santou about the same thing. He told me that Valerie always paid her rent on the first of the month by check to her landlord.”

Terri reached over and picked at one of the containers of food. “This isn’t the Kennedy conspiracy here, Rach. I think you’re beginning to go a bit ’round the bend. Could be Henken sold the building a few years ago. Maybe she kicked off. Who knows?”

I didn’t understand why Terri was defending him. “But Santou told me she paid by check.”

Terri popped a shrimp in my mouth. “So what? What am I, God? Maybe she did open a checking account. Don’t take my word for it. Check it out for yourself. But I think you’re jumping to dangerous conclusions, Rach. You’re looking for any excuse not to let yourself get involved with this guy. If you don’t want to get laid, then don’t. But you’re taking it a little far.”

I smiled at Terri, trying to let go of the edginess that had hold of me. “You’re pretty good at this. While you were at it, you didn’t happen to find out who organized the head bashing that took place during the march, did you?”

“I’m still working on that, but you’ll be the first to know.”

Terri removed the pink paper umbrella from the glass I handed him. He placed it next to the blue one already floating in a fresh bouquet of roses, sent to him only an hour ago from a prospective lover.

“Do me a favor and let this one go, Rach. You’re making me worry, and I’m going to have to pay for enough plastic surgery as it is. I don’t want to think of you ending up like Kitty. Or even worse, like Valerie there.”

We had rewound the tape to Valerie’s big entrance, and watched again as she turned to face the camera and winked. She seemed more alive now than she had just a few days ago as she looked at me once more, overcoming time, space, and death to reach out through the camera and grab onto my soul.

Sleep didn’t come easily that
night. I stayed awake watching a battery of old comedy reruns, until the first ray of light hit the sky about five that morning. It was only then that I felt safe enough to finally close my eyes. Waking up wasn’t any easier. I slept soundly through the buzz of the alarm clock, only to be jarred into consciousness by the persistent ring of the phone. Picking it up, I heard Santou’s voice.

“
Chère
, how about we get together for some dinner tonight? Say someplace on neutral ground, away from the precinct and prying eyes.”

A circus of moths flapped around in my head, the communal beating of their wings making the process of focusing in on the conversation a difficult one. I yawned, the muggy air of an already steamy morning rushing into my lungs, filling me with the stale fumes of cars that trundled by on the cobblestone pavement outside my window. The damp sheet clung to my back as if it were grafted onto my skin. I mulled over what Terri had said last night, and decided maybe he was right. Maybe I was making excuses out of fear of getting involved with Santou. Maybe it was time I got over that and started taking chances with my life again.

“Business or pleasure?”

Santou gave a low, throaty laugh. “How about we make it a fifty-fifty deal, sugar? That way we don’t miss out on anything. Tell you what—I’ll even give you the choice of where to eat. Just don’t break the bank.”

I already knew where I wanted to go, and the choice would cover both bases nicely. I checked in with Terri and Rocky, feeding them both some leftover chow mein, and then headed out of town. I drove past sugarcane fields quivering in front of my eyes like a mirage in the morning heat, past cypress trees standing half-dead in the brown, briny waters of the bayou. I raced toward Morgan City and Terrebonne Parish, to play out a hunch involving land records and deeds in the area.

As usual, my presence was greeted with less than the normal Cajun friendliness by any of the local officials. The clerk for the city hall was a woman who seemed as old as the building itself. Soft and round, Mrs. Jeanette Tercle was of a suspicious nature under the most normal of circumstances. Having a Northerner ask to go through the parish land records was deemed an unnecessary affront.

“What you want for to be snooping through our records over here, you? This don’t have nothing to do with no business of wildlife. These be parish records. We don’t be going into your office, wanting to snoop through your business, no.”

It took fifteen minutes of gentle persuasion, along with pulling out my badge and threatening to file a complaint, before I was allowed to follow the waddling form of Mrs. Tercle into the record room where the deeded history of Terrebonne Parish was kept. A minor tug of war ensued in order to pull each folder from wizened fingers that clamped tightly around bulging files, refusing to let go. Every sheet I paused over was carefully noted with eagle eyes. When Mrs. Tercle wanted to take a bathroom break, I was expected to tag along rather than be left alone to rampage wildly through yellowed and disorganized sheaves of papers. But my persistence finally paid off. After hours of sorting through dusty, useless records, I found what I’d come for. I informed Mrs. Tercle that she needn’t pull any more of her folders.

“What you find, you? I need to know so as I can make it official information.”

“Nothing, Mrs. Tercle. I’m sorry to have taken up so much of your time.”

Mrs. Tercle harrumphed in triumph as she shut off the window fan and closed the door behind us, entombing the folders within their rusted file drawers once more.

“I don’t know what you expected to find, you. But I don’t be having time for this kind of thing. You tell your boss and don’t be bothering me with such nonsense again.”

I drove back over the Huey Long Bridge and breezed down Interstate 90, as the information I had discovered sank in. It wasn’t the local Mafia that Buddy was playing with. He was back in tight with the big boys. A co-owner was listed on Buddy’s fish-packing business in Morgan City: none other than Global Corporation, alias Frank Sabino, alias New York mob. What I wanted to know was if Global Corporation was just receiving a piece of the action, or whether they were full-time players entrenched in the day-to-day running of the place for reasons all their own.

Playing a hunch, I had also tracked down the title papers on Pasta Nostra restaurant, just east of Morgan City in the town of Gibson. While the business was owned by Buddy, the building and the land it was on were rented from Global Corporation, giving Sabino a finger in that proverbial pie. I had a funny feeling I’d find the exact same information once I looked up the rest of Buddy’s business dealings in New Orleans.

With little sleep and no breakfast, I pulled in to grab lunch at the first greasy spoon I could find. Abear’s Cafe smelled of deep-fried grease, along with its specialities of coon stew and gator fingers. Its decor was an odd assortment of tables, with sticky, plastic-seated rickety chairs that didn’t match. But the beer was ice-cold and the gumbo was hot and spicy. To top it off, Hunky Delroix was sitting at the next table with his back to me, crouched over a giant bowl of alligator stew. I picked up my beer and sat down across from him without waiting for an invitation. Glancing up, he dropped his spoon onto the table with a loud thud.

“Jesus Christ, Porter. Can’t you let a man even enjoy his food in peace?”

“Relax, Hunky. This is a social call.”

Hunky pulled out a handkerchief as red as his face and mopped his brow before plunging his spoon back into the stew.

“There ain’t no such thing with you, Porter. You’re just like your boss. If you ain’t out arresting folks, you just ain’t happy. Well, I’m plumb out of information for you these days.”

“You’ve got it all wrong, Hunky. I wanted to pass on a tip to you for a change.”

Hunky eyed me suspiciously as he tore a chunk of bread off the loaf in front of him. Scooping up some stew with it, he shoved the piece into his mouth. He washed it down with a slug of beer, wiping his chin with the back of his hand.

“Oh, yeah? What kinda tip you got for me? Maybe you wanna let me know a good place I can go to shoot me some ducks.”

“Only in season, Hunky. No, I wanted to let you know about a place where I heard they’re looking for some part-time help these days.”

Hunky pulled a heaping plate of catfish in front of him. “You trying to find me a job, huh? Must be feeling a little guilty about always stealing food from me. Where is this place?”

Watching Hunky wolf down his meal, the last thing I felt guilty about was taking any food out of the man’s mouth.

“It’s a fish-packing factory just west of Morgan City, called Fin and Claw. I hear they’re in need of a few extra hands.”

Hunky finished off his beer and burped, signaling the waitress for another. “You kidding me, Porter? Where the hell do you get your information from? You don’t know shit. That place is locked up tighter than a virgin. Hell, you gotta know the right people to get a job there.”

“What are you talking about, Hunky? I’ll put in a good word for you if you want. Maybe that’ll help you on your job application.”

Hunky sprayed a mouthful of beer across the table as he let out a loud belly laugh, leaning back in his chair. “That’s real good, Porter. You’re gonna get me a job with the mob. Wait till Hickok hears that one.”

“You mean the mob controls that place? I thought Buddy Budwell owned it.”

Hunky’s face fell as he realized the information he’d just let slide by. “Damn you, Porter. Just do me a favor and stay away from me, unless you’re gonna take me in.”

Slapping down a few dollars, he grabbed his bottle of beer and pushed his way out the door. He had told me what I wanted to know. Sabino had to have more than a fondness for Louisiana gumbo and crawfish, to be investing so much of his business down here. He wasn’t making a fortune in packing fish, and he could have run his own restaurant far easier up North. There was a bigger draw that was keeping him busy in the bayou.

Cattails fluttered along the banks of the bayou. I slowed my car to gaze at the water lilies that hung heavy with purple blossoms ready to burst, scattering their petals into the brackish water that lay still and stagnant under a hot white sun. A cottonmouth slept by the side of the road, too lazy to move, the seething blacktop warming its belly. Taking my time driving back to New Orleans, I sidestepped Slidell along the way. I hadn’t checked in with Charlie in the past few days, and I didn’t want to. I was too afraid of what would happen if he found out I’d stolen a ten-foot alligator being held as evidence in a case that might never be solved. Besides, he wasn’t going out of his way to keep me informed on any progress he and Trenton were making. I’d been crazy to think the Dynamic Duo might ever become the Three Musketeers. I was more out of the loop than ever.