Текст книги "The Bone Tree"
Автор книги: Greg Iles
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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 58 страниц)
CHAPTER 13
FORREST KNOX TOOK a remote control unit from his pocket and opened the gate of the Valhalla Exotic Hunting Reserve. Driving north from Baton Rouge always invigorated him, leaving behind the gas flares of the petrochemical plants of Cancer Alley and the haunted fields of the Angola Prison Farm, and climbing into the green hills and hollows of southwest Mississippi, the hunter’s paradise. The great river itself lay scarcely a mile away now, beyond a few wooded ridges and the swamp where the river flowed eons ago.
The serpentine access road to the hunting camp wound through acres of second-growth hardwood forest filled with wildlife surveillance cameras and food plots for the game animals. After a descent through broken terrain, the road flattened out on a plateau overlooking the rich bottomland between the westernmost ridge and the Mississippi River. At the edge of this plateau stood the main lodge. Ozan’s state police cruiser was already parked in the oyster shell turnaround on its back side. Forrest parked beside him, then hurried up the steps and into the lodge.
He found Ozan in the great room, a vast space lined with the heads of exotic game taken from around the world, though several species had been transplanted here and bred behind the camp’s eleven-foot fences. The Redbone sat in a leather club chair, a shot glass of bourbon beside him. Forrest couldn’t remember seeing the man so anxious in all the time he’d known him.
“You want a drink?” Ozan asked, moving to get up.
“Later.” Forrest sat on the sofa opposite Ozan and put his boots up on an ottoman. “We need to make some fast decisions.”
“I’ve got the Black Team online. Everybody but Pichot. He’s in Florida, but he’s heading back as soon as he can get a flight.”
“Good. Because Brody put us in a real corner tonight. It’s a relief that Henry Sexton’s dead, but we have to assume he passed on what he knew to the Masters girl. And we have to assume Morehouse told Henry everything he knew.”
“Shit.”
“And Brody’s death is going to rattle the hell out of the money boys in New Orleans.”
Ozan’s lips parted in silence: this consequence had not yet occurred to him.
“If I’d known all this would happen,” Forrest thought aloud, “I might have waited to move on Mackiever, but the iron’s in the fire now.”
The Redbone took a sip of whiskey, then wiped his mouth. “If that girl is the problem, I can take care of that. I can be in Natchez in forty minutes. By noon tomorrow, she’ll have disappeared off the planet. Nobody’ll ever find her. It’ll be like she never existed.”
Forrest admired Ozan’s initiative, but the man was no strategist. “No, it won’t.”
“Sure it will. How many drug dealers have I fed to the alligators? I can do the same to Mayor Cage, and even the FBI man if it comes to that.”
“This is different. If high-profile people like that disappear, the story will just get bigger and bigger until it swallows us. If we killed the Natchez mayor, its newspaper publisher, or an FBI agent, we’d have a dozen new FBI agents in here the next day. Kill all three, and we’d have fifty. And they’d never stop hunting until they nailed us. No . . . the only people we can kill with impunity at this point are Dr. Cage and Ranger Garrity. The others are practically untouchable.”
The Redbone shifted uncomfortably on his chair. “What’s the alternative? Sit tight and hope for the best?”
“That’s one option, as much as I hate to contemplate it. The other, obviously, is to hit hard and fast, damn the consequences. Scorched earth.”
“But you just said they were untouchable.”
“I said ‘practically.’ There’s one way you can pull off a hit like that. You need a fall guy. The crime has to be unambiguous, the corpses there for everyone to see, and the killer so obvious that all the carnage looks inevitable in retrospect. Then people move on without ever looking past the surface of things. You understand?”
“Sure. Like Kennedy, right?”
Forrest smiled and nodded, pleased at the irony of Ozan making this leap. The Redbone had learned a lot about Forrest’s business in the relatively short time he’d been involved, but he knew nothing about the innermost secrets of the Double Eagles.
“Who the hell could our fall guy be?” Ozan asked. “Brody and Regan would have made good patsies, but they’re dead.”
Forrest’s smile broadened. “They can still be blamed for everything that happened up till tonight. After all, Brody did order that first attack on Henry, at the Beacon office. And Brody and Regan burned the Beacon. The FBI’s bound to prove Brody was behind the kidnapping of Cage and Masters, and also that his guys killed that Natchez cop. How big a leap is it from there to assume Brody sent the sniper to finish off Sexton at the hospital but killed his girlfriend by mistake?”
Ozan grinned. “A damned short one. I like it. But that won’t help us with the other targets.”
“No. But this is the beautiful part. For those hits, we’ve got two patsies so perfect they could have been sent over by Central Casting.”
Ozan was clearly behind the curve. “Who you talking about, boss?”
“Snake and Sonny. The original Double Eagles. Last of the crazy racist crackers.”
The blood drained from the Redbone’s face. “Are you shitting me?”
“If we want to go scorched earth, it’s the only way. We have to give the FBI somebody they can close the cases on, fast. With no doubters at the table.”
Frightened wonder still shone from Ozan’s face. “You mean it, don’t you?”
“You bet your ass I do. Listen to me. Katrina has given us a chance to get our snouts up to the big trough. One or two deals with the guys I’m rubbing shoulders with now is worth more than everything I ever made out of Snake and Billy’s operation.”
Ozan still looked unconvinced. “But . . . how can you take those guys down? The second Snake and Sonny figure what you’re up to, they can cop a plea and send you to death row. And me along with you.”
Forrest shook his head. “Give me some credit, Alphonse. By the time Snake knows what I’m really doing, it’ll be too late.”
“You’d better lay this out for me, boss. ’Cause I can’t see it working.”
“You know Snake. A more hotheaded son of a bitch never drew breath. And once he hears what happened tonight, and how much danger we’re all in, he’ll be screaming for blood. The fact that he fucked up the hit on Henry will make him that much more ready to do it. You agree?”
“That’s Snake, all right.”
“Okay. Now, he’ll be expecting me to hold him back, like I usually do. Only this time I won’t, see? I’ll tell him the stakes are so high that killing those three is our only hope. And he’s the only man to do it.”
A tight smile had appeared on Ozan’s face. “Snake’ll eat that up, all right.”
“Here’s the twist, though. As soon as Snake has made the hits, we’ll leak something that puts the FBI on his trail—but not too close. Naturally, we’ll know where Snake’s hiding. Sonny’s fishing camp would be perfect. It’ll be Snake and Sonny, maybe one more Eagle. I’ll make a public appeal as Snake’s nephew, to get him to turn himself in. I’ll have told him to expect that, that I’m just playing the game. But then the FBI will corner them.”
Ozan was nodding.
“I’ll volunteer to go into the house and talk Snake out. Once inside, I’ll stall a little, tell him I’m figuring a way to break him from jail once he goes in. Then, when he’s distracted, I’ll take him out. Sonny, too.”
The Redbone blinked; the rest of him remained as motionless as a cigar store Indian. “You mean kill him?”
“Snake and Sonny both. And whoever else is with them.”
The Redbone swallowed hard. “Your own uncle?”
“It’s the only way, Alphonse. If I’m willing to kill my own uncle because he committed murder, I’ll be permanently safe. Washed in the blood, son. Better yet, that’s political gold in this state. You can’t buy that kind of press.”
“Ain’t you forgetting something?” Ozan asked, still looking wary. “What about Billy? You think he’s gonna stand by and keep his mouth shut after you kill his daddy?”
Forrest had thought a lot about his cousin during the past hour. “I can’t say for sure. But I do know this: Billy knows his father is a hothead. And the last thing he wants on this earth is to go back to prison. Billy did a jolt in Raiford in the eighties, and that was all the hell he could stand. He just might sit still for this, if I put it to him the right way. After all, Snake’s had a good run. It’s time for our generation to take the helm.”
Ozan swallowed the last of his bourbon, then leaned back in his chair. “It’s a ballsy plan, I’ll say that.”
“Can you see any other way to take those people out and stay out of prison?”
As if against his will, Ozan shook his head. “You know I’m up for damn near anything, boss. But when you start killing family . . . I don’t know. It’s like asking for trouble from the gods.”
Forrest barked a laugh. “The gods? Alphonse, the only god you need to be worrying about at this point is the god of war. And you know what he says.”
“What’s that?”
“Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.”
Ozan gave him a smile, but it looked forced. The Redbone’s hesitancy shocked Forrest. He’d watched Ozan commit acts as brutal as anything he’d seen in Vietnam, even among the tribes up in the Highlands. To see him sobered by such a logical proposal gave Forrest pause.
“When will you decide?” Ozan asked quietly.
“I think I already did. The only question is when. It’s too late to stop the girl from getting tomorrow’s newspaper out. Whatever she knows at this point is going to hit the street. I just have to hope my name is nowhere in it. And that Snake’s is.”
“It will be,” Ozan said with certainty. “I checked with Brody’s mole at the paper, like you said. They know Snake killed one of those women in the insurance fraud case. The whistleblowers. Morehouse told Henry the story. They’re going with that tomorrow.”
A rush of excitement went through Forrest. “Goddamn, that’s perfect.”
“As long as the cops don’t arrest Snake before he can take out our targets.”
“They won’t. What evidence do they have besides a story told by a dead man? No, there’s a mile of wiggle room between a newspaper story and an arrest warrant.”
Ozan jerked in his chair at the muted ring of a cell phone. He dug into his uniform pants and brought out a black TracFone.
“Who the hell is calling you?” Forrest asked. “Didn’t everybody get my order?”
“We got two guys missing, remember?” Ozan said. “The ones we sent to get Dr. Cage at his partner’s lake house. I hope to God it’s them.”
“Is that a burn phone?”
“Yeah.” Ozan answered with a press of his thumb. “What’s the word?” he asked, then waited for a coded reply. “Okay. What happened?” As Ozan listened, his face darkened. “Where are you now?” he asked after nearly a minute. “Then get here as fast as you can. . . . What? . . . I’ll tell him. Out.”
The Redbone clicked off and looked at Forrest with something close to fear in his eyes. “This ain’t our night.”
“What happened?”
“That was Floyd Grimsby, one of the two guys I sent after Dr. Cage. The other was named Deakins. They’re off-duty cops from Monroe. They were the closest to where we traced Dr. Cage’s nurse’s cell phone to.”
“And?”
Ozan shook head. “They found the doc there, down by the water. Deakins was about to shoot him when Dr. Cage gut-shot him with a pistol from his pocket. He fired right through the pocket. Floyd went for his piece, but Cage had the drop on him. Then Cage drugged him and dumped him out in a cotton field somewhere.”
Forrest felt as though a cold wind had blown through the room. His blood pressure was dropping. “I don’t believe that,” he said. “Old Dr. Cage?”
Ozan shrugged. “You told me he served in Korea, didn’t you? And him and that Garrity did kill Deke Dunn.”
“Was Garrity at the lake house?”
“No sign of him, Grimsby said.”
“Jesus Christ. We can’t catch a break.”
“There’s one more thing,” Ozan said.
“What’s that?”
“Dr. Cage gave Floyd a message for you.”
“Me? What message?”
“Floyd said it had to be face-to-face. He’ll be here in less than an hour.”
“My face’ll be the last thing that fuckup ever sees.”
Ozan got up and started pacing. “What kind of message would Dr. Cage send you?”
“You don’t think the FBI has Grimsby, do you? That this is a setup?”
“I don’t think he would have given me the right code if it was like that.”
Forrest snorted. “A dirty cop from Monroe? Can you put a man down by the gate before he gets here?”
“Sure. I’ve got four in the bunkhouse.”
“Do it. Meanwhile, I’ll have a think about Tom Cage, M.D.”
“How much do you know about him?”
“A bit. Daddy always liked him. And I know he did some favors for Carlos Marcello back in the day.”
“Dr. Cage?”
Forrest shrugged. “It was the sixties, man. Strange times down here. Get that man on the gate, Alphonse. We’ll wait down by the river with a radio. If it’s the FBI, we’ll take the boat.”
Ozan pulled on his duty coat and headed for the nearby building where overflow guests stayed when hunters came in large groups.
After the door closed, Forrest walked back to the study where the seven-hundred-pound razorback he’d killed with the atlatl spear glared from behind the desk. His cousin Billy used this desk more than anyone else. In the top left drawer was a box of Cuban cigars. As Forrest sat in the padded chair, he opened the drawer and thought back to the days when his father was alive, an afternoon when Dr. Cage had given Forrest his junior high football physical. He remembered the easy manner in which his father and the doctor had dealt with each other—Frank Knox and Tom Cage, two men from opposite ends of the social spectrum. His father always said they didn’t make them like Dr. Cage anymore. If what the cop from Monroe had told Ozan about the gunfight was true, Frank Knox had been posthumously proven right.
Wouldn’t be the first time, Forrest thought, lighting one of Billy’s cigars and settling in to wait.
CHAPTER 14
WALT GARRITY LAY half-asleep on a double bed in the Sheraton Casino Hotel in Baton Rouge, just inside the downtown levee. He’d planned to spend no more than an hour in the city; now he’d wasted more than eight, and Tom was out on the night roads, wounded and carrying a hostage, with every cop in Louisiana on his trail.
Walt had come here to meet Colonel Griffith Mackiever of the Louisiana State Police, hoping to get the statewide APB for Tom and himself revoked. He had at least some reason for optimism. Long before Colonel Mackiever joined the LSP, he’d served as a Texas Ranger with Walt, and despite the passing years, they still shared the Ranger bond. When Walt arrived at the hotel, however, he hadn’t found his old comrade-in-arms waiting, but a faxed note telling him Mackiever had been forced to take an unexpected trip to New Orleans to check out their “mutual problem.” Walt assumed this referred to Forrest Knox, and he hoped to God Knox hadn’t suckered his old compadre into a trap. There was talk that Forrest might be next in line for superintendent of the state police, and Mackiever’s death would open up that powerful position sooner rather than later. Untimely deaths were far from uncommon in this godforsaken state.
Garrity had never liked Louisiana: shitkickers in the north and Frenchmen in the south—Baptists versus Catholics, praise Jesus. Driving down Highway 61 from Natchez, he’d thought of Angola Farm out in the darkness between the road and the Mississippi River, glowing like some fortified island of lost souls. Most of the prisoners chained inside the Farm belonged there, but the hypocrisy of harsh punishment for men who’d ripped off a few hundred dollars in Louisiana stuck in Walt’s craw. People thought Huey Long had set the high bar for state corruption in the 1930s, but the Kingfish was a latecomer to the public trough. A wise man once said that any territory colonized by the French eventually settled into a state of lassitude and corruption. As regarded Louisiana, he was right. Like some third-world island appended to America, the state had decayed as steadily as an old whore working the darkest den in Marseilles. During the 1950s and ’60s, Texas Rangers had viewed certain Louisiana parishes as feudal fiefdoms more akin to the realms of warlords than to American counties, and Walt wasn’t sure that the foundations of those fiefdoms had been completely uprooted.
Rolling past the vapor-lit machinery of the refineries and chemical plants along old Highway 61, he’d reflected on what bad odds Mackiever must have faced trying to run the state police in such a place. New Orleans had become so lawless during the 1990s that the Justice Department had considered federalizing the NOPD. The chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina hadn’t surprised Walt a bit; the cataclysmic storm had merely laid bare the systemic corruption that had been festering downtown for three centuries, and which had doomed the city itself by allowing a substandard levee system to be built.
With that kind of rot eating away at the state’s largest city, no one should have been surprised to learn that rural parishes had also become dens of vice and violence—a perfect environment for predators like Forrest Knox. Clothed in the uniform of the state police, an ambitious sociopath could pretty much do as he pleased in the boondocks. When the officials above him had so many secrets to hide, which of them would risk confronting a man who had a high-tech intelligence division under his command?
Walt had hoped Mackiever could explain how Forrest Knox had risen so high in his organization, but with every hour that passed, his faith that he would see his old buddy faltered. Tossing and turning on the hotel bed, Walt dreamed of his wife, who had begged him not to leave home to try to help his old friend. The night before Tom called, Carmelita had actually dreamed of Walt’s funeral. But Walt felt he had no choice about helping Tom, and he’d told her as much. As he drove away from their house, Carmelita had watched with her face forlorn and her arms folded, like a woman sending her husband off to war. Walt had felt an ache like an ulcer in his belly, but he hadn’t turned around.
Yesterday, when some Knox-controlled asshole shoved photos of a beheaded family under Carmelita’s door to frighten her, it had taken all of Walt’s self-restraint not to walk up to Forrest on the street in front of LSP headquarters and blow his brains out. Though Walt now had three old Ranger buddies covering his house in Navasota, every second of fear his wife had suffered stung him like a hornet. Before this mess was through, he would exact retribution for each sting.
Picking up his derringer from the bedside table, Walt rubbed his eyes and headed for the toilet to take a leak. He was zipping up his pants when the landline rang beside the bed. Walt walked out and stared at the phone for three rings, then picked it up and put it to his ear.
“Cap’n McDonald?” said a familiar voice.
Walt said nothing, but his rapid pulse began to subside. “Bill McDonald” was the alias that Colonel Mackiever had instructed him to use when he registered at the hotel. McDonald had been one of the toughest and wisest Texas Rangers ever to wear the star, but he’d died in 1918. It was unlikely anyone else would think to use such a code. Nevertheless, Walt said, “Name a president that Bill McDonald guarded.”
“Teddy Roosevelt.”
Walt sighed with relief. “Where are you, Mac?”
“Coming up the hall. Sorry to make you wait.”
“I’m opening the door.”
Walt took his derringer to the door, opened it, then extended the bolt and backed away so that his visitor would have to push open the heavy door to gain entry. Then he stood just inside the open bathroom door and aimed the derringer at head level.
Someone knocked three times, then slowly pushed open the door while a voice behind it said, “At ease, Cap’n. I know you’ve got a gun back there.”
Walt kept his derringer cocked and ready until Mackiever came in and locked the door behind him. One of the colonel’s hands was empty; the other carried a bottle of Macallan Fine Oak, which gladdened Walt’s heart. Mackiever’s hair had gone nearly white since Walt had last seen him, though his trimmed mustache still had a little pepper in it. His old eyes looked dazed, and he shook Walt’s hand like a man grasping at a life preserver.
“Damn, I’m glad to see you,” he said. “I was up to my ass in alligators before you ever called. But this time I think they’ve got me. Can I pour you a scotch? I need one bad.”
“I won’t turn it down.”
Mackiever went to the bathroom sink and unwrapped two water glasses. Walt watched him pour—both hands shaking—then took the proffered glass and drank the whisky neat. He savored the burn as it sank toward his stomach, then took a seat on the end of the bed while the colonel poured himself another.
“Dark days,” Mackiever said hoarsely.
Walt grimaced. “Let’s hear it, Mac.”
The colonel sat heavily in a chair by the table before the curtained window. As Walt raised his glass in a silent toast to his old friend, he realized he was looking at a man close to breaking.
“Forrest Knox just issued me an ultimatum,” Mackiever informed him. “Step down for health reasons, or he’ll ruin me. I’ve got forty-eight hours.”
“Ruin you? How?”
“The son of a bitch has had one of our tech experts—one of my own officers—planting kiddie porn in my computers, both at work and at home. If I don’t resign, he’ll go public with child pornography charges and drag me through the mud until I choke. You know how it goes with accusations like that. It’s almost impossible to prove a negative. You never shake ’em.”
“That’s bullshit, Mac. A man with your record? He’d never make that stick. You can prove that stuff was planted.”
“Not this time. Knox has been setting this up for months. Day by day, in real time. There’s an extensive search history, thousands of photographs of young kids, even online conversations. They’ve already printed out reams of computer logs and placed them secretly into evidence.”
“Jesus. I still think—”
Mackiever stopped him with a raised hand. “You haven’t heard the worst of it. Forrest’s got two underage prostitutes from New Orleans who’ll swear under oath that I paid them for sex. Male prostitutes.”
“What?”
The colonel nodded, his haunted eyes glancing at the floor. “He just paraded one of them in front of me in a New Orleans hotel room. The boy was no more than fifteen, if that. I’m screwed, partner. I’ve got no play.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
Mackiever took another sip of scotch and closed his eyes. “There isn’t anything.”
“Help me understand this. How the hell did a man like Knox climb so high in your outfit?”
The colonel shook a cigarette from a pack of Salems and lit it. “Forrest joined the force long before I came over from Texas. He worked his way up, making strong connections all along the way. Everybody knew he was Frank Knox’s son, but nobody in power gave a damn about that, not back then. Hell, most don’t care now. But I wasn’t any better. I initially sized Forrest up as a straight shooter. A hardass, sure, but fair—or so it seemed. And he appeared to have no relationship at all with his extended family.”
“What changed your mind about him?”
“That’s hard to say. After a while, the little man inside just started telling me something was wrong with him. For one thing, he used to keep a samurai sword hanging behind his desk. Like we used to see in Texas sheriffs’ offices, remember? Forrest claimed his daddy had taken it off a Japanese officer during World War Two. One day I asked him to tell me the story, and he did. But first he took a couple of photos out of his desk. They were in a frame he kept in his bottom drawer.”
“And?”
“The first one showed this Jap officer brandishing a samurai sword. The guy had two human heads tied to his belt. Caucasian heads. I kid you not, Walter.” Mackiever gulped some more scotch. “Why don’t you look surprised?”
“I was in Korea, remember? I know about shit like that.”
“That’s right. Well . . . according to Forrest, these two heads on the Jap’s belt belonged to American marines. But the second picture showed a U.S. Marine sergeant holding the same sword with a headless body at his feet. The dead man was the Jap officer from the first picture. The marine was a tough-looking bastard, a real leatherneck. He looked like Forrest, only twice as mean.”
“Was it Forrest’s old man?”
Mackiever nodded. “Frank Knox. In that photo, he’s holding the Jap officer’s head up for the camera. By the hair. Forrest said when his daddy found the first photo on that Jap officer after an island battle, he cut the guy’s head off with his own sword. Forrest kept the photo in his desk. He’d take it out and show it to people when they asked about the sword. And they loved the guy for it.”
“I’ve known guys like that,” Walt said, thinking of the photos of the beheaded family that had been shown to Carmelita to frighten her.
“Don’t be so sure. It’s easy to underestimate Forrest Knox. God knows I did. He’s a smooth character. I hear he’s done some sick stuff to hookers he’s arrested—blacks and Asians, mostly—and I’ve heard talk of even crazier things going on at a hunting camp his cousin Billy runs just over the Mississippi line. The official name is the Valhalla Exotic Hunting Reserve, but they call it ‘Fort Knox’ amongst themselves. But hell . . . that’s not what you’re here for.”
“I’m here to help you, buddy,” Walt said, “and to get your help in return. Tell me what you need, and I’ll do the same. My request might overstep the bounds of friendship, but we is where we is.”
Mackiever sucked at his cigarette as though it were a narcotic. “Walter, by the end of the day, I’m going to be a private citizen. I won’t be able to help you. And there’s nothing you can do to help me.”
“You’re wrong on both counts. When you’re in the kind of fix we’re in, you do what you’ve gotta do to get the ox out of the ditch. Tell me more about Forrest. A guy that dirty has to have a weak spot. All of God’s creatures have an underbelly.”
“If Knox has one, he’s wearing armor over it.”
“Why’s he got such a hard-on to move you out?”
Mackiever lit a second cigarette off the first one and poured himself another scotch. “Walt, you may not believe this, but there are people in this state who saw Hurricane Katrina as a blessing. Divine intervention, even.”
“I’ve heard the talk.”
“But do you know what’s beneath it? For the past twenty years, New Orleans has been shrinking. Major companies have been pulling out, and white workers have been fleeing across Lake Pontchartrain. The trend seemed unstoppable—until Katrina. The storm destroyed the homes of huge numbers of blacks, and they were bused out of the city in the so-called evacuation. About four days too late, by my count, but that’s not my point. That ‘evacuation’ looked more like the relocation of the Indian tribes in the 1800s to me. That’s how it’s worked out, too. And the money boys don’t mean to let ’em back into the city. They want to raze the Lower Ninth Ward and demolish the housing projects elsewhere, then put up new developments for their kind of people.”
“White people?” Walt grunted.
“Or rich colored. They aren’t that particular, so long as you’ve got the green. Point is, the state’s elite doesn’t see me fitting into this new utopia. They want an enforcer with their own ideology heading up the state police.”
“What’s the LSP got to do with the city of New Orleans?”
“More than you think. The fat cats have got puppet politicians standing for all the municipal offices, but political authority is still subject to the whim of the voters. The man with my job isn’t subject to election. We have a lot of power and discretion, and with the right superintendent—or the wrong one—the state police can function like a paramilitary force. The governor can use us as an intimidation tool, sort of how Nixon used the FBI and the IRS against his enemies.”
“I see.”
“I first started to suspect what Forrest was up to about two years ago. I suspected he had my Internal Affairs division compromised, so I handpicked a mean son of a bitch named Alphonse Ozan to infiltrate the Criminal Investigations Bureau. Ozan’s a big Redbone, so I figured he’d be immune to Knox’s influence, Knox being such a racist, and half Cajun to boot. There’s no love lost between those two groups.”
“Bad bet?”
“Apparently. Ozan’s fed me steady reports ever since, claiming Knox is clean. But about two months ago I started smelling something. I ran a little test, the way the SOE used to do during World War Two, to test the integrity of their people. And I confirmed my worst fear.”
“Why didn’t you bust Ozan?”
“Better the devil you know, right? Since then I’ve been quietly trying to scope out just how big Knox’s operation is.”
“And?”
“He’s got his fingers in a lot of pies around the state. He’s taking cuts from various crooks to leave their operations alone. Coyotes moving illegals through the Port of New Orleans, drugs coming into the country on speedboats down around the barrier islands, prostitution. You name it, Forrest skims it. And after Katrina hit . . . I think he used a team of SWAT guys to selectively take out some of the competition.”
“Man alive. This is the guy the moneymen want to put in your job?”
“Most of Forrest’s supporters don’t know about the criminal stuff. All they know is, Knox did them some favor or other. Got ’em LSU tickets on the fifty-yard line or sprung their drunk kid from some backwoods parish jail. Hell, I still can’t prove anything against him. Nobody will testify against the guy. Everybody either loves Knox or lives in terror of him.”
Walt swirled some scotch around in his mouth, then swallowed. “Some of his thugs threatened my wife earlier today. Out in Navasota.”
Mackiever shook his head. “I’m sorry, Walt. But it doesn’t surprise me. She okay?”
“I’ve got some retired buddies covering her now.”
“Good.” The colonel looked around the room like a man startled from a dream. The daze Walt had seen when he entered the room had never really left his eyes. “Well, I think you see my problem. How exactly can I help you?”
