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.
In the third, a woman cowered from them in terror and began a lament in loud, rapid Spanish. Bardo backhanded her across the mouth.
"Shut up, bitch," he ordered in a nasty whisper. She shut up and clutched several hungry-looking children against her to keep them from crying.
The fourth and last room was also unoccupied. But on the bed a white envelope was propped against the pillows, and on that envelope was printed Pinkie Duvall's name.
He snatched it up and ripped it open. A single sheet of paper drifted from it onto the grimy rug. He retrieved the paper and read the typewritten message.
Then he uttered a roar of rage that shook the windowpanes.
Bardo took the note from him. He cursed when he read the message.
"They wouldn't dare."
Pinkie rushed from the room and bounded down the stairs, Bardo on his heels. Bardo's men were ordered to follow. They piled into the second car and raced to catch up as he sped away.
Pinkie could barely contain his fury. His eyes were hot and murderous.
"I'm going to kill them. They are dead men. Dead."
"But who are they?" Bardo asked, as he swerved to avoid hitting a delivery truck."Who would do that to Remy?"
Remy. His Remy. His property. Snatched from him. Whoever these motherfuckers were, they had nerve, he'd give them that. Too bad such courage was squandered on someone who was going to die so soon. And they would die. Slowly. Painfully. Begging for mercy, then pleading for death. For taking from him what was his, what he had created, they would die.
When they reached Lafayette Cemetery, the two cars screeched to a halt and disgorged six men. Duvall and Bardo were in the lead as they entered through the tall iron gates. Pinkie didn't wait for Bardo or the other men. He went in search of the row specified in the note, weaving his way through the avenues of tombs until he reached the one he was looking for. He ran along the path, the crushed-shell gravel crunching beneath his shoes, his breath fogging in front of him.
What he would find he couldn't guess. Remy's remains zipped into a body bag and dumped here? A recently opened tomb, her blood sprinkled on an altar of stones? A shoe box with ashes inside? A voodoo sacrifice?
Once he'd ordered Bardo to cut off a woman's face and deliver it in a pizza box to her husband who had ignored previous, more subtle warnings.
Pinkie expected this message to him to be just as jolting.
No longer would he underestimate this unnamed enemy. The man was smart, devious, and he knew Pinkie Duvall well enough to know the right buttons to push. He'd sent Pinkie on this macabre treasure hunt that would end with his finding what?
His feet skidded in the gravel as he came to a sudden stop, recognizing it the instant he spotted it.
It wasn't a body or blood he found, but the message was just as bold.
Temples throbbing, hands balling into fists, he read the name engraved on the tomb. It was the resting place of Kevin Michael Stuart.
"Is he going to kill me?"
J Dredd spooned soup into Remy's mouth and, when he dribbled some, made a fuss of blotting her lips with a paper napkin. He muttered self-deprecations about his clumsiness, but he didn't respond to her question.
"Stop pretending you didn't hear me, Dredd," she said, stilling his hand when he tried to ladle another spoonful of soup from the bowl.
"I won't panic. I'd just like to know. Is he going to kill me?"
"No."
Reading nothing in his expression to cause doubt, she relaxed once again against the cushions he'd placed behind her back so he could feed her more easily. She had claimed she could feed herself, but he'd insisted on doing it, and now she was glad she had consented. The wounds on her back weren't as painful as before, but her head was muzzy from her long, drugged sleep. She would have lacked the energy to lift more than a few spoonfuls to her mouth, and she was surprisingly hungry.
The soup, court-bouillon according to Dredd, had been made with a fish stock to which tomatoes, onions, and rice had been added. It was hot and flavorful.
"Is it ransom he's after?"
"No, cher'. Basile doesn't care overmuch for worldly goods." He glanced around the room, which had been furnished and decorated out of a junkyard. Winking at her, he added, "He and I are alike that way."
"Then why?"
"You know about Basile's friend, Wayne Bardo's trial, all that?"
"Revenge?"
The old man answered in Cajun French, but his eloquent shrug spoke volumes.
"My husband will kill him."
"He knows that."
She looked at him inquisitively.
"Basile doesn't care if he dies, so long as he takes Duvall with him.
I tried to talk sense into him this morning, but he wouldn't listen.
Devils are driving him."
Hoping that she might enlist Dredd's help, she reached for his hand and clutched it tightly."Please call the authorities. Do this, Dredd, not just for me, but for Mr. Basile. It's not too late for him to turn himself in. Or forget the authorities. Call my husband. Basile can disappear before Pinkie gets here. I'll persuade Pinkie not to press charges against him. Please, Dredd."
"I'd purely love to help you, Remy, but Burke Basile is my friend.
I would never betray his trust."
"Even if it was for his own good?"
"He wouldn't see it-that way, cher'." Gently, he pulled his hand free.
"To Basile this is a ... a mission. He made a covenant with himself to avenge Kev Stuart's death. Nobody could talk him out of it now."
"You know him very well."
"As well as anybody, I guess. He's not an easy man to know."