Chapter 9

THE SHRIMP KING

I spotted the giant anthropomorphic neon shrimp, balancing on its tail and decked in a gold crown and purple robe. Placide circled the building, meticulously scrutinizing every pickup truck until he found a secluded spot next to the dumpster in back. Half a dozen motley feral cats scattered as noiselessly and plentifully as roaches when he turned off the ignition and doused the lights, their attraction, the stench of yesterday’s fish platters escaping the dumpster. These were well-fed cats.

We cowboy-sauntered around the building and in the front door like a couple of regulars. We didn’t fool anyone. Several pairs of expressionless eyes fixed on the two strangers invading their turf, one a black giant. Pretty hard for anyone Placide’s size to be inconspicuous anywhere.

A corner booth was open, so we slid in as inconspicuously as possible. Satisfied we weren’t there to stir up trouble, the eyes quickly turned back to Monday Night Football on the small screen above the bar, the intruders already forgotten or ruled benign.

“He’p y’all?” drawled the dour little waitress who approached us, exuding boredom with her job, her world, her life. She worked her jaw ferociously at a large wad of gum as she tapped her pencil stub on the order pad.

“I’ll just have a Bud, for now.”

“And you?” she asked, diverting half-closed eyes to Placide without further acknowledgement of me.

“Just coffee, please, Ma’am.”

She wheeled around and shuffled back to the counter to round up our drinks, the flouncy magenta and black plaid uniform and matching nurse-style cap looking incongruous on the spare middle-aged frame, her orange-ish teased hair screwed up into something of a make-shift French twist in back.

I hadn’t yet seen Dawkins, but I knew he was here somewhere, probably in the adjoining room watching our icy reception. The joint was crowded, a hangout for couples and single guys, though I didn’t see any single women. Charlie Rich belted a cry-in-your beer song from the jukebox about the most beautiful girl. A young platinum blonde in skin-tight blue jeans swayed her hips to the music while she browsed the selections, her current squeeze keeping one hand on her ass while he looked over her shoulder at the song menu. A couple slow danced in the narrow space in front of the jukebox, fused so completely it was impossible to distinguish where one began and the other ended.

The smell of fried seafood and cigarette smoke hung in the air. Several young couples sat at tables and booths eating from obscenely heaped platters of fried shrimp, catfish, and scallops. The group of beer-drinking cowboys at the bar cheered raucously and slapped backs at some exceptional play on the screen.

I couldn’t understand why Dawkins would pick this place to meet. Maybe he figured none of his colleagues would dream of showing up in a place like this. I was pretty sure he was right.

After I ordered a second beer, Dawkins, wearing jeans that needed suspenders in the interest of gravity, loomed beside me holding a beer mug. He asked to squeeze in beside me. He wasn’t lying about squeezing; he had to slide his ponderous gut along the edge of the table to fit.

“Doucet,” he nearly whispered, eyes shifting around the room.

“Dawkins,” I followed suit.

“I could have some information for y’all,” he said, wasting no time on small talk.

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“First off, Armstrong sold us out. Long story. Sit back.”

“I’m ready.”

“I guess y’all know the ag business took a tumble recently.”

“I know what I’ve seen in the news for the past few years.”

“Well, your man Armstrong figured out how to capitalize on the loss before he left us. To be honest with you, Doucet, I don’t have all the particulars by any means, but I’ll tell you what I do know…in strictest confidence, of course.”

“Of course. I’ll forget your name the minute I get up from this table.”

“Make no mistake; this is risky business. I could be putting my career and my life on the line just by meeting you. Yours too, for that matter. You’re dealing with ruthless folks, now. Understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes sir. I’ve noticed that.”

“You see, Armstrong made his money when he inherited his father’s tractor company. Armstrong is a personal friend of Sapphire Salt’s last CEO, Arnold Huff.”

“The name sounds familiar.”

“It should. Arnold Huff is now US Secretary of the Treasury. While small family-owned farms were struggling to stay afloat, the large-scale factory farms were buying their equipment wholesale from the large tractor and equipment manufacturers and abandoning the small companies. As they gobbled up the small fish, Ideal Tractor was showing amazing profits, all phony, of course, thanks to Armstrong and his friend Huff, who was then Sapphire’s CEO. They were scheming to save their asses under the guise of saving the two companies. Armstrong had his fancy account books that his personal New York City CPA had doctored up for him, so it looked like Ideal was thriving, when, in fact, Armstrong was stripping out whatever he could before selling out.”

“So then how did Armstrong end up at Sapphire?”

“God knows how he managed it, but Armstrong sold Ideal Tractor for millions more than it was worth. Huff turns right around and hands Armstrong the job of CEO at Sapphire. Huff had just been appointed to President Stanton’s Cabinet, so Huff was moving up. I don’t know how many millions changed hands, but they both got mega-rich, and Ideal Tractor was essentially sacrificed in the bargain.

“Within thirty days, we all knew there’d been a fraud because Ideal stock prices dropped over $60 a share in a two-week period, right after some insider trading and massive stock selloff by Huff and Armstrong and a few of their ‘business associates.’ Long-term emplo’ees who were counting on those stock options for retirement were hung out to dry. And their pensions mysteriously disappeared. There’s been some rumor of suicide as their only option, though I don’t believe anyone has gone to that extreme…yet anyway.” He paused for another swig of beer.

“It damn near ruined Sapphire Salt, too, from what I’ve heard,” he continued, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “They use industrial salt to clean gas and oil wells, as well as to make some chemicals and plastics, so when the recession hurt the oil industry, it hurt the salt industry too. Armstrong let a large number of Sapphire emplo’ees go, sold off God knows how many company holdings, but ultimately saved the salt company, at least temporarily, for which he got a commendation and a cool two-million-dollar bonus, plus whatever he’s siphoned off Sapphire. Meanwhile, Ideal Tractor ended up in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.”

“Well, I see you’ve managed to keep your doors open.”

“Hah! Barely! We had to completely restructure the company. We’re down to a quarter of the emplo’ees we had before the crash, and no one is guaranteed a future. Benefits have been slashed, morale is at rock bottom. But it’s tough to find work with everybody restructuring these days. The future with any company is just a stab in the dark since the recession, so the ones left don’t have any choice but to hang on. But there’s still some Ideal Tractor cronies on the force here, and they’re watching the rest of us like hawks. Armstrong wants to save his own ass, make sure the whole truth about his phony books and insider trading doesn’t go public.”

“I noticed the place looked pretty vacant. Now I see why!”

“You just saw the one facility. The plant out in Frayser is under half capacity. Besides nearly half our manufacturing and clerical staff, we also laid off all but two of our maintenance crew of thirty. We would have had to close the doors except that Armstrong’s replacement managed to outsource a few manufacturing jobs and get us some overseas contracts. Of course, that just left more of our own people without jobs or pensions.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” I said. “Now I need to find out what all this had to do with my father. And what about Dallas Matherne? Any word on him?”

“I couldn’t find much on Matherne. He was in maintenance. When the company was going down the tubes, he just quit before he got laid off. A lot of guys did the same. He knew his days with Ideal were numbered. Could easily have been a coincidence that he ended up back in Louisiana like Armstrong. Especially since he was from there.”

“That coincidence story is pretty hard for me to swallow. I still think there’s a connection.”

“Well, Doucet, you’re on your own there,” Dawkins said. “But that’s how Armstrong got to Sapphire. What he did once he got there is anybody’s guess, but I can grant you, it wasn’t anything good. Armstrong is bad news. Whether Ideal Tractor survives him remains to be seen. As for Matherne? Small potatoes. No great loss or gain to have him or lose him. But Armstrong? I wouldn’t put anything past a greedy S.O.B. like that—as in, watch your back.”

“I hear ya. Sounds like Sapphire’s future is in jeopardy too.”

“Hey, I didn’t say that,” he said. “Of course, that inundation…”

But he was cut off mid-sentence when the whole restaurant was rocked by a 100-decibel crash that felt like a 3.0 earthquake. Placide’s cup rattled in its saucer, spilling most of his coffee. Women shrieked. People stared blankly at each other for a hint of how they were supposed to react.

My first impulse was that it must have been a kitchen explosion. Placide’s eyes panned the room instinctively before he jumped up and headed to the front door. He hurried back to inform me, “A blue pickup just peeled out of the parking lot, H.”

Dawkins’s eyes widened as he looked questioningly at me.

“Someone must have followed us out of Ideal today,” I explained. “We saw him at lunch. I guess he’s tailing us now. Drives a blue pickup, if that rings a bell.”

“No one I know of. Look, I’ve got to get out of here,” Dawkins said nervously, sliding his gut back out of the booth. “This convinces me that there’s a bug in my office. I’m afraid we could all be in grave danger.”

He tucked his head down and headed for the back door, then surprised me by walking back to ask if we’d parked near the dumpster. I just stared up at him and nodded. By this time, patrons had begun to recover from their initial state of shock and had begun hovering around the back door to catch a glimpse, shrieking in disbelief. Someone behind the bar phoned the police.

“A car just exploded,” Dawkins said quietly but urgently. “Right next to the dumpster. I was never here.” Then he slipped out the front door amid the commotion and frenzied buzz and shrieks of the crowd.

Placide squeezed through the crowd to confirm that it was Father’s LTD, nodding solemnly toward me over everyone’s heads. I didn’t even rise. I just sat dumbfounded as the sounds of sirens pierced the din of the restaurant.

“Major Doucet? Captain Gordon,” said the officer who seated himself in the booth across from me. After he examined my North Carolina driver’s license and Placide’s Louisiana chauffeur’s license, he paused thoughtfully, then said, “I’m afraid we’ve discovered evidence of foul play.”

I just looked at him wondering why he bothered telling me that. Cars don’t generally explode by spontaneous combustion, in my experience. “No shit,” I finally replied.

“Any idea who might have wanted to blow up y’all’s car? Or what’s more likely, y’all in y’all’s car?”

I felt weak, and my voice reflected it. “We’ve had someone following us today,” I replied. “We haven’t been able to get his plates, but he drives a light blue pickup truck. I suspect he either works at Ideal Tractor or was hired by someone who does.”

“Why do y’all suppose someone from Ideal Tractor might have it in for you two fellas?” he asked, narrowing his beady eyes suspiciously.

“It’s a long story. Ya got a couple hours?”

“I got all night. Why don’t you and your sidekick here ride with me down to the precinct and we’ll get y’all’s story on record.”

“Yes, Sir,” I agreed, rising weakly and nodding to Placide as Captain Gordon and I walked over to where he stood watch by the front door.

It was nearly midnight by the time I finished relating selective bits of what I knew, and I was exhausted from the ordeal. I left out Dawkins’s name, as requested, so as not to implicate him. I told the officer that Placide and I had simply ventured out in search of a quiet place to drink a beer without being watched and had happened upon this place. I fibbed that we hadn’t been able to find anyone yet to talk to at Ideal, but we had planned to go back out there tomorrow. Of course, I filled him in on the blue pickup truck, alligator boots, and beer gut. Now I just wanted to hit the sack and chalk it all up to a day from hell. An officer agreed to drive us back to the motel.

“Y’all going to be staying around a couple days?”

“Yeah, a day or two, probably. Not scared off yet,” I assured him.

“Well, we’ll let y’all know when we get a ballistics report back on that explosive device. Not that it makes much difference at this point.”

“Yeah, sure,” I replied half-heartedly.

The next morning, I called my insurance company, which directed me to their Memphis branch to fill out the necessary forms. Placide had the guy at the front desk of the motel set us up with a mid-size rental car to be delivered at 0930 hours. Now, at least until we were spotted around town, we felt as though we could travel incognito in the gray Chevy Malibu.

After we left the insurance office, we stopped at Helen’s Home Cooking, a nondescript hole-in-the-wall a block away, for a late breakfast. I grabbed a newspaper from the machine out front when I saw Father’s charred LTD on the front page. Inside the restaurant, crowds of Elvis fans buzzed like hornets over the story.

After we got our breakfasts, I spread the paper on the table. Just under the explosion article, an alarming headline leaped off the page:

“Henry Dawkins, COO of Ideal Tractor, found dead in his home. Apparent Suicide.”

Reading the story, I learned that not long after Dawkins had left us, the woman next door heard a gunshot coming from his house and called the Memphis police. We would still have been at the station. Dawkins was found holding his pistol in his right hand, with a hole blasted at close range into his right temple. Police were investigating, but it looked like suicide. Suicide, my ass, I thought as I read on.

“Like many Ideal employees concerned about retirement, Dawkins had been despondent for the last three years, ever since Ideal Tractor had gone into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.”

Depression and despondency, my ass: same lame-brained excuse they had used for my father. I handed the article to Placide. So far, I didn’t think our rental car had been spotted, but I knew it was just a matter of time.

“I’m thinking we need to get out of Memphis ASAP,” I said, with most of our eggs, grits, and ham still sitting in front of us. We downed the rest without further discussion, then I paid the tab and we headed back to the motel for our gear.

Crowds were just beginning to queue up for the Elvis tour buses as we crawled back through the congestion toward the interstate. We could contact the Memphis police from our home turf and tell them where they could reach us. I decided I’d better ‘fess up about meeting with Dawkins, but I’d rather do it long-distance than back at the station. Dawkins wouldn’t be giving us any more information, that much was certain. But now that Treasury Secretary Huff’s name had been added to the mix, I was beginning to suspect this could go all the way to the White House.