Salvation Row (27 page)

He went through into the second bedroom. This one was not carpeted, but there was a rug that he could use to hide the surgery that he performed on the floorboards. He worked quickly and neatly, drilling a second tiny hole and lining up the camera. He flicked the power to
live
and obscured his handiwork.

He returned downstairs. There were two small piles of chewed-up drywall on the floor. He found a hand-held dust buster and cleaned them away. He looked up to the ceiling. The two holes were visible, but discreet enough to remain unobserved unless the target knew to look for them.

He took his case and left the house, locking the door behind him.

He made his way back to his truck and drove two blocks away. He parked and took out his phone. Footage from the cameras was broadcasting to the application that he had installed earlier. It was in colour and good quality, the fish-eye lenses distorting it a little, a price worth paying for the extended coverage that they offered. It was good work. Not perfect, because he had hoped that he might be able to get his hands on a laptop or a tablet, but it would do for now. He had a very useful piece of kit being couriered overnight, but this would serve until it arrived.

He closed the application and called Milton.

“Well?”

“Done.”

“Good. He left two minutes ago. Heading back your way.”

“You might have told me.”

“Didn’t want to disturb you.”

“If he had seen me—”

“He didn’t. Stop moaning, Ziggy. Is it working?”

“What do you think?” he said indignantly. “It’s perfect. We’ll be able to see and hear everything he does.”

DETECTIVE PEACOCK left a second-hand Ford on the street outside the Hilton, the keys under the mat. Boon took the key and opened the trunk. There was a 9mm Beretta with plenty of ammunition under a blanket. He took the gun, shoved it into the waistband of his jeans, and got into the back. Lila slid behind the wheel.

“Where to, baby?”

“Head down to the place.”

She put the car into drive and pulled away into the traffic.

Boon took out the gun and stripped it.

“Is it okay?”

“It’s in decent shape. It’ll do.”

They crossed the Industrial Canal at the North Claiborne Bridge.

“This guy,” Lila said. “Who is he?”

Boon had been thinking about Milton ever since he had seen the picture. The details came back easily. “He worked for the British. He was very good, too.”

“As good as you, baby?”

He grinned. “Didn’t say that.”

“So you ever work with him?”

“Once. The job in Iran.”

“He was on that?”

“Him, the Americans, one other Brit.”

“And?”

“Apart from him being very good? He’s quiet. Thoughtful. A lot of the guys I worked with—CIA, especially—they’re loud and brash, kind of boring. Wouldn’t last five minutes in the Mossad with a personality like that. They would’ve been dragged out into the desert, shot in the head and buried. Milton was more like us than them. He would’ve fit in well.”

“And now?”

“No idea, baby. I haven’t seen him for years.”

“And you have no problem with him being the target?”

Boon snapped the magazine back into the well and put the gun away. “No, I don’t. Business is business. If the shoe was on the other foot, he’d have no trouble, either. He’s just unlucky that he’s ended up with us.”

They turned off North Claiborne and into the grid of devastated streets to the south. Lila followed the satnav to Salvation Row.

“Look at this place,” she said.

They saw the row of colourful houses, bright and new, standing out as a stark rejoinder to the crash of jungle and dereliction all around them.

“Over there,” Boon said, pointing to a lot that was being cleared.

“That him?”

“Don’t slow down. Just drive by.”

He slid down a little, but not enough so that he couldn’t look out of the window as Lila drove by the lot. There was a crew there, seven men hacking at the overgrown plants that had sprouted around the wreck of a house. A pickup was parked at the curb and a small riding lawnmower was being refuelled from a gas can. He focussed on one of the crew in particular. A man of average height and build, black hair, the wings of a tattoo visible on the skin revealed by a dirty muscle top. The man drove a shovel into freshly tilled earth and reached down for a bottle of water. The car went by and the man looked up. Boon remembered, years back, to Cairo and Tehran. It was Milton. He hadn’t changed.

“Baby?”

“Not now,” he said. “Too many witnesses. We’ll pick him up later, do it somewhere quieter. Keep driving.”

IZZY GLANCED around the courtroom. It was divided in half by a scratched wooden railing, with the rows of the public gallery on one side and the counsel tables and the raised witness stand on the other. There was no box for the jurors because the appeals court did not require the service of a jury. There were a handful of reporters, some of whom she recognised, and even a courtroom artist who sketched faces for the local TV news. The seats in the public gallery were empty. Jackson Dubois and the rest of his team sat at one table. Lawyers for the city sat at the other table. Izzy had the third one to herself.

She looked up at the bench of grizzled justices and, behind them, the large bronze eagle in bas-relief, its talons clutching arrows. It was intended to inspire respect, maybe even reverence, and, despite it being the worse for wear, it still managed that for most folk. Not so much for Izzy, though. She felt the same buzz of anticipation, the welcome frisson of nervous energy that she had harnessed during all of the previous hearings. And she respected the history of the court, and the line of eminent jurists who had presided over the cases she had studied as a student—some of whom were immortalised in dusty portraits that had been hung from the walls—but the incumbents had done nothing to disabuse her of the notion that they were nothing more than a rubber stamp for the government.

The chief justice cleared his throat.

“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is the case of Build It Up, Inc. vs City of New Orleans, continuing from the last adjournment.” He squinted out into the room. With the wrinkles around his eyes and the black robe draped over his withered form, he reminded Izzy of the eagle behind him. “Miss Bartholomew, concerns have been raised with the bench that you have conducted this appeal in a fashion designed to prolong it for as long as possible. The bench is making no accusations of that, but we do make the point that it is incumbent upon you to proceed with all due expediency. You are entitled to a fair hearing, but we will not allow the legal process to be used as a delaying mechanism.”

“Who raised those concerns, sir?”

“Counsel for the city and for Babineaux Properties.”

“Well, they can rest assured that I am proceeding as quickly as I can. As you can see, I’m doing this on my own. I don’t have their resources.”

“Be that as it may, Miss Bartholomew, my suggestion remains, please proceed with alacrity.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Now, then, shall we get started?”

“I’d like that.”

The double door at the end of the room opened and a handsome, well-dressed man walked inside. The lawyers immediately straightened their backs and looked intensely at their notes. Only Dubois looked up at the newcomer and nodded in recognition. Izzy looked at him, too. She recognised him. Joel Babineaux. It was the first time that he had been in court. Was he here, she wondered, because he had been told that the proceedings might come to an end this morning? Was he here to gloat, to grandstand in front of the press? If he was, she was going to disappoint him. She didn’t take her eyes off of him as he walked with the barely noticeable limp that gave away his prosthetic. He sat down, undid his jacket, and then, slowly and deliberately, he looked up and across the room at her. Izzy held his gaze.

She was still staring at him when the chief justice cleared his throat again. “We adjourned so that the city could procure a report. I believe that report has been prepared?”

Counsel for the city started to rise, but Izzy spoke first. “Before we do that, sir, I’d like to make another argument. I’ve been looking at the case of Kelo vs New London. I think it’s pertinent.”

The justice couldn’t prevent the weary sigh. “Is it important, Miss Bartholomew?”

“I think it is.”

The justice nodded, the resignation obvious. “Very well. Proceed.”

Izzy looked across the room at the benches of expensively assembled lawyers, saw the irritation on their faces, and couldn’t stop herself from smiling. She turned her focus back on to Babineaux. His expression was inscrutable.

She took out her notes, cleared her throat, and began.

JOEL BABINEAUX made sure that he was already on his way out of the courtroom before the day’s proceedings were adjourned. He waited outside, his thousand-dollar shoes clicking against the polished black and white chequerboard tiles. The lawyers he had retained had been the first to emerge, grumbling as they came through the double doors, their disposition changing immediately as they saw him. They were pandering toadies, all of them, and he waved them off with a brusque flick of his hand. Jackson Dubois was next. Babineaux waved him off, too.

He was still waiting as he saw the man walk down the corridor. He was dressed in cut-off jeans and a T-shirt, his clothes discoloured with dirt and sweat. He looked hopelessly out of place, but, despite that, there was something about him that suggested that it would have been unwise to confront him. He came up to the entrance to the court and took a seat on the pew opposite the door. Babineaux glanced at him. He was staring right back, his eyes the iciest of blues.

Babineaux smiled. “Hello.”

“Mr. Babineaux.”

“Are you here for the case?”

“I’m here for Miss Bartholomew.”

“I’m afraid you have my advantage.”

“John Smith.”

Babineaux extended a hand. The man wiped his palm against his sullied T-shirt and took it. He had a firm grip, but so did Babineaux. They held for a moment. Neither squeezed too hard, but just enough so that the other might take away the right impression.

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Smith.”

The man’s mouth stretched flat and taut, something between a sardonic smile and a grimace, and his eyes glittered. Babineaux found the effect unsettling.

Isadora Bartholomew was one of the last people to emerge, struggling with the case of notes to which she had so expertly referred during the day’s proceedings.

Smith stood. The woman looked at him, then at Babineaux.

“What do you want?” she said to him.

Babineaux stepped across to her, a broad smile on his face. “Can I give you a hand?”

That surprised her. Her face registered immediate suspicion then hostility, both of which she quickly hid with a polite and professional shake of the head. “No, thank you, Mr. Babineaux.”

“We can manage,” Smith said.

“Please.”

“I’m fine,” she said, with more heat.

“Let me talk to you, then,” he said.

She shook her head and continued on.

Babineaux watched her, his eyes racing ahead to where the lawyers were waiting at the end of the corridor. He noticed them hovering, ready to do his bidding. The sight of them suddenly sickened him. They were all ready to do what he commanded them to do, all of them suckling from his teat, yet none of them could solve this simple fucking problem.

He closed his eyes, concentrated on smothering his temper, and then set off after her. “Please, Miss Bartholomew. Five minutes, that’s all.”

Smith was quickly alongside him. “She’s not interested.”

“Please. Just hear me out.”

She stopped. “What do you want to talk about?”

“You don’t have to talk to him,” Smith said.

“It’s all right. What is it?”

“This,” Babineaux said, indicating the court with a broad sweep of his arm. “The case. The disagreement. I’m upset that it’s come to this.”

“You didn’t leave us with a choice. If I hadn’t brought the case, you’d have already bulldozed the houses, wouldn’t you?”

“I do admire what you’ve done, you know. Construction isn’t easy at the best of times, and the houses you’ve built—I’ve seen them, Miss Bartholomew. I’ve driven down that street, more than once. They are very impressive.”

“And you still want to knock them down.”

“We want to
move
them.”

“That’s semantics and you know it.”

“You might not believe it, but I want to help. We both know that all you can possibly do with this is to delay the inevitable. We will win in the end. It might take a few weeks, and it’ll be expensive, but the law is on our side.”

“That’s debatable. Did you listen to what the judge said today?”

“The law is on our side,” he repeated, “and there is a political will to regenerate the parish. I can do that. I can make it right.”

“And what about the people who live there now? What is it, ‘sorry, I know you’ve only just moved back into your homes, but we need you to move out again while we knock them down?’ Is that it?”

His stomach clenched with anger, but he smiled and swallowed it all down and found his most emollient tone. “Let me help you. If you withdraw this action and let us build on Salvation Row, I’ll give you twice as much land in return and I’ll pay enough for you to build twice as many houses. I’ll lend you a team to build them, too. For free. Think of the good that you could do with that. Twice as many families in brand-new accommodations. I know you don’t trust me, Miss Bartholomew, and that’s fair enough, but I’m telling you, hand on heart, I will make sure you get more than you have now. We could make a real difference.”

That last suggestion was a step too far, and he could see it as soon as the words left his mouth. “We are already making a difference,” she snapped.

“That’s not what I—”

She rested the heavy case on the floor and turned to him, anger flashing across her face. “Let me tell you something. You think you can come down there, take out your wallet and wave your money around and then, just like that, you get your way. Maybe that’s what life is like for you, but, I’m telling you, Mr. Babineaux, it’s not going to work for you this time. My family has lived in the Lower Ninth for years. My mom and dad live there and my mom’s family lived there, too. If you think you can pay us off and then knock down the houses that hard-working men and women
sweated
to build, then I’m here to tell you that ain’t ever going to happen.” She leaned down, wrapped her fingers around the handle and hefted the case again. “Now, if that’s all you had to say, I’ve got preparation today for tomorrow. Maybe you are going to beat us. Maybe. But I’ll tell you this for damn sure, I ain’t gonna make it easy for you.”