Chapter 18

SHOWDOWN

After Sarah Beth Matherne left, Earlene stepped in the conference room. “I’ve got some good news, H.”

“High time for some good news! Lay it on me.”

She took a seat opposite me. “Our attorneys’ FOIA request was a success, H. We’ve discovered that Armstrong owns a hedge fund, and Huff is on the board.”

“Jesus, Earlene.”

“Oh, it gets much worse than that. The hedge fund purchased Ideal Tractor, after its bankruptcy when the price was low. Sapphire Salt was a different story. Their production was down, too, but Huff had hired Wheless Engineering and Consulting to estimate their salt mining reserves before he got his cabinet position. They discovered that the salt cavern had been mined too close to the outer edge of the dome, Probably thanks to Huff’s time as CEO, leaving only a thin wall of salt between the cavity and the surrounding rock and dirt. The consultants predicted the salt mine would have collapsed anyway, probably within a few months. So, when Armstrong took over, he and Huff took an ax to both companies’ operating expenses, rewarding investors in their own hedge fund rather than investing in either company.”

“My God. It’s no wonder they’re willing to commit murder to keep this story from leaking,” I said.

“Together, they loaded Sapphire Salt with large amounts of debt, laid off dozens of employees. Then, using false accounting reports, they sold company holdings and put the profits in an investment trust, which Armstrong’s hedge fund owns, of course.”

“No wonder they wanted to sabotage the salt mine. With no compunction about losing lives, apparently.”

“There’s more: Our attorneys have discovered that under Huff and Armstrong, Sapphire has loaded the investment trust with millions in rent, further enriching investors. Then, Sapphire transferred pension responsibility to the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the PBGC. And get this, H! As ‘coincidence’ would have it, Treasury Secretary Huff is on the Board of Directors overseeing the PBGC. As a board member, Huff would have participated in decisions regarding underfunding both Sapphire’s and Ideal’s pension programs. They’ve managed to steal much or all of the pensions from all the guys they laid off and all the families of the casualties.”

“Good Lord! This is unbelievable! Greed has no limit.”

“Exactly. And all the billionaires involved sold off their stock and collected their millions before orchestrating the failure. So not only did they strip employees of their pensions, they left employees with huge losses on their stocks. Sapphire’s creditors are now accusing Secretary Huff of assisting Armstrong in transferring millions of company assets to the major stockholders.”

“Of course.”

“Hopefully, we can include Deslatte, the Haggerty brothers, Gov. Mansur, along with Armstrong and Secretary Huff, and any other wealthy investor who profited from the scheme.”

“You’ve outdone yourself again, Earlene. I don’t even know what to say, besides thanks.”

“No thanks needed, H. Your daddy always had the best attorneys money could buy. And your investigation convinced them to keep digging. We’ll all be happy if we can nab these rich murdering bastards.”

Those were words that I knew for a fact had never come out of Earlene’s mouth before.

I hadn’t had time to digest all that info yet when I got a call at Aunt Ethel’s that afternoon from Louisa Ardoin, Sid’s wife. “Major Doucet, Sid plans to stop by the Farmers’ Market in Patterson on the way home,” she said. That was our code for “You need to get down here right away,” so Placide and I wasted no time.

When we got as far as Centerville, I rang Sid’s apartment from a payphone. “Fifteen minutes,” I told him.

Sid was already drinking a Coke at a corner table when we arrived. When I joined him, he handed me a manila folder, thick with copied documents. “My man!” I marveled, leafing through the stack of a dozen or more pages. “How the hell did you get all this so fast?”

“Made friends with one of the janitors, ole Landrieu from Crowley, my hometown. You put a couple ole Cajuns together, you won’t get no shortage of bullshit. While he was talking one night about how things ain’t the same back home, I watched him punch the code in at Deslatte’s private office. I’m pretty good with numbers, me, so I remembered ‘em. Had pretty free access after that. Then I just had to copy these and return the originals.”

“Way to go, Sid,” I said. “Of course, you realize Deslatte has security cameras all over that plant. You’re in even more danger now that you broke into his office!”

“Oh, I didn’t do nothin’ until I found out where the security cameras was. I turned ‘em off before I broke in, then turned ‘em back on. What, you think this ole Cajun was born last night?”

“Perfect! But if they happen to check the clocks on those cameras, you’re still in a lot of danger. We could have all the evidence we need right here. Can you give me a rundown?”

“That whole operation down here is a sham,” Sid said. “Didn’t take me long to figure that out. Supposed to be recycling, but I smelled a rat right away, and I do mean smelled. At night’s when they start their dirty work. There’s a whole team comes in and the valves are opened wide, the incinerators are cranked up balls to the wall, and out blows more smoke than St. Helens. They’re real sneaky about it, too. Wear white lab coats and call themselves safety inspectors. They’re breakin’ more EPA regulations than some whole states combined. And Deslatte uses his ‘recycling services’ in trade to pay off his biggest suppliers when someone starts puttin’ the heat on him for past due accounts.”

“Sounds about right,” I said, leafing through the pages.

“Yeah. That name ‘Deslatte Shale Processors and Recycling’ just covers up Deslatte’s hazardous waste disposal business,” he continued.

“I’ve heard about that. Did you get any details?”

“Yeah. After he runs the waste through a ‘filtering press’ to ‘process’ it, he claims he recycles the resulting product into cement, but there ain’t much cement coming out of there. A few pallets here and there for show. He’s burning off what he can at night and piling up what’s left of the waste in a huge toxic sludge pit way out back, behind a wall, and far away from the plant.

“Ole Landrieu told me about a camera set up on the bridge over Highway 90 monitoring traffic so Deslatte’ll know when the EPA is about to show up at the gate,” he continued. “Of course, all the higher-ups are gettin’ kick-backs to use the facility, so the governor turns a blind eye. Or he might even be in on it. Deslatte’s charging refineries fifty bucks a barrel, supposedly to process their waste in that filtering press, but it don’t get filtered, and it just ends up in the pit.”

“How did you ever manage to get all this information?”

“Learned a lot of that by listening to Landrieu and some other ole fellas during our breaks. Everybody down here knows what’s goin’ on, and they ain’t shy about talking about it, leastways when the bosses ain’t around. Landrieu’s been there fifteen years, and he tells it like it is. Knows the operation like the back of his hand. Pay’s good and he’s too old to go back on the rigs, he says. He showed me the sludge pit, and then I found this proof in Deslatte’s files.” Sid pulled out a document with lists of chemicals that had supposedly been “recycled.”

It looked like Deslatte’s record-keeping was going to backfire on him, because now we had the evidence we needed.

“Of course, I don’t know what all them numbers mean,” Sid continued, “but I thought some of it might be useful. There’s copies of some letters in there, too. Looks like Deslatte bought Calco Oil stock low, before the Aloco merger, then sold high before the I-ran revolution caused the market to crash in ’79. After the crash, employees with stock options lost their ass. See? It’s all in here. There’s copies of letters advising some powerful folks when to sell. Look at them names! Deslatte and Armstrong, they’re in cahoots. And I’m guessing they ain’t alone. Deslatte bragged about the pile of money he made selling his Sapphire stock right before the inundation. He invested all that money into Armstrong’s hedge fund. See here?”

“Yep. Same thing the rest of them have done,” I said. “My question now is, was Dallas Matherne a player or a pawn? He and a bunch of upper administration muckety mucks all profited on stock sales the same way as Deslatte. Did you see his name anywhere?”

“Don’t know nothin’ about Matherne,” Ardoin said, “but if he was a pawn, someone must have told him when to sell. I sure didn’t know when to sell my few shares. Took a bath, me.”

“A lot of folks did,” I said. “Anybody who wasn’t aware of the planned inundation. I also need to find out who those two goons are in the black Blazer. They tried to flip my car once and ran a DNR guy right off the Atchafalaya Bridge. I figure they’re the same ones who killed Father, or more likely, paid some cheap hitmen to do it for ‘em. I’m guessing they’re with the federal government in some capacity. But I need evidence.”

“Any sign of them two lately?”

“Within the last week or so. Placide said he’s spotted them stalking us, but they know from past experience what a marksman Placide is, so they haven’t dared mess with us, yet anyway. I don’t go anywhere without Placide,” I said. “If they know I’m here talking to you right now, they’ll start keeping tabs on you, too, if they haven’t already. Or if they ever figure out that someone broke into Deslatte’s office. Just stay below the radar, Sid. But for now, you need to pack up and get your ass back up to New Iberia, right away. Do not pass Go.”

“I know how to watch my back, me,” he said.

“Just don’t get overconfident. These guys lack anything resembling a conscience. Their only God is money. Human life is disposable if it gets in the way of money.”

“I gotcha.”

“OK, thanks for all your help, Sid. You’ve put some of the missing pieces in place. Looks like we’ve got enough evidence here to get some feds on Deslatte’s case,” I said, patting the envelope that I’d stuffed the reports back into. “Now you just need to concentrate on getting the hell out of there. Go back to your apartment just long enough to grab your stuff. We’ll let Earlene mail them your resignation and contact your landlord. It’s too risky now to even think about going back to the plant.

“Placide and I will head out in a few minutes,” I said. “Just keep your eyes on the rearview from now on, even after you’re back home safe. And contact Earlene as soon as you get there. I’ll give her a heads up.”

“Will do, H.”

As it turned out, Sid didn’t even have time to get to his apartment. Those two goons had either followed us or followed him to Patterson. That camera over Highway 90 might have alerted them. From his vantage point by the front window, Placide spotted the Blazer pulling out of a parking spot down the block and wedging itself in a couple of cars behind Sid as he was driving back out Bernard to 90. I would have alerted the police, but I figured the Patterson police could be in on the scam too. So Placide and I fell in several vehicles behind the Blazer.

Sure enough, a mile or two down 90, we watched as the Blazer slid up beside Ardoin’s pickup and knocked it toward the shoulder. These guys weren’t much on originality. But Ardoin was ready for them. He must have seen them coming. He slammed on his brakes, spun his car around behind the Blazer, and peeled out across the barrier and in the opposite direction, prompting Placide to speed up. When the Blazer tried to make its own U-turn, Placide screeched sideways in front of it to block it, hollering to me, “Hit the floor, H.” Cars doing 60 slammed on their brakes, skidding to a stop behind us. Cars behind them slammed into what became a screeching, crashing pileup of twisted metal.

Shots pinged off the body of the Torino as Placide ducked his head below the dashboard, handed me the .45 from under the seat, and pulled the .38 special out of his ankle holster, then lifted his head to fire a few rounds. I poked my head up to fire off several rounds, then dropped down. Just then the window on my side shattered, blasting bits of glass into my right cheek and raining glass on my back and neck when I hunched below the dash. A bullet grazed my right shoulder in a lightning flash of searing pain. I was glad to have an ace marksman on my side, though I was in a sitting duck position, bullets pinging and whamming against the passenger door of the Torino, my shooting arm useless now.

“You got the driver, H,” Placide called, ducking below the dash himself to reload. “He’s slumped on the wheel.” Placide rose up and shot once over my head, then ducked again. Another hail of bullets hit the passenger door. Placide rose again and took another shot, followed by yet another shower of bullets. Placide rose and fired once more. This time, silence.

We waited.

More silence.

It was over almost as quickly as it had begun, even though the firestorm had seemed endless at the time. When I heard sirens, I raised my head from under the dash, where I was busy saving my ass, and saw Placide nod his OK.

When the cops arrived, they found two men in the Blazer, the driver with one bullet hole in his temple and the passenger with one in his forehead and another one in his neck. There was no question we were being shot at. The Torino had a dozen or more bullet holes in the body, a smashed windshield, as well as the window on the passenger side where my face should have been, and two flat tires. I felt lucky to be alive. I held my right upper arm while blood ran out of the shoulder wound and drenched my shirt. More blood ran down my cheek and neck from embedded glass, so Placide took over and talked calmly to the police.

Some EMTs arrived, bandaged my shoulder, and confirmed that it was just a graze. They were able to remove several shards of glass from my face and bandage it. “Don’t worry, scars shouldn’t be too unsightly,” one of them told me, as if he thought I needed assurance of that.

It took several hours of rerouted traffic for a handful of wreckers to drag all the twisted and mangled cars off the road. Sid, Placide, and I were all escorted downtown for a police report that took the rest of the afternoon. And what a story we had to tell.

With the information I had now, along with everything Earlene had found, I could go all the way to the top, bring down a long list of billionaire politicians and corporate execs.