Epilogue

JUSTICE

Four Years Later

Over the last few years, Marlisa had come to grips with her loss, and she and I had become an item. We visited back and forth a few times over those years. I had secured single housing on the base, so Marlisa had a place to stay, right by my side, when she visited. We had evolved from friends to confidants, and finally, to lovers.

Midge, only an abstract memory now, had met the man of her dreams and was settled comfortably in a Charlotte home with two cats and two kids. I couldn’t have been happier that she found someone who apparently lacked my neuroses. Maybe I’d even lost some of my own neuroses. What is life, after all, if not a test? A means of shaping us into what we become. Granted, a tough test, at times. But had events not transpired as they had, as tragic as many of them were, I would never have met this vision that was Marlisa. I knew Charles would always remain in her heart, but she was beginning to have enough room left over in there for me as well.

I learned that Marlisa had been the one who sent the two yellow roses to Father’s funeral. She had sent a similar pair of roses to each of the funerals following the inundation. Charles’s coffin had been draped with a spray of yellow roses, and she wanted the two yellow roses to give her a connection with the others who had lost loved ones.

She told me, “Yellow roses symbolize remembrance and the promise of a new beginning.” I hoped she’d be willing to share that beginning with me.

The whole town of New Iberia had been following the various trials, attending court whenever possible, hoping to avenge the needless death of loved ones, friends, or mere acquaintances after our town’s worst man-made tragedy ever. As we were leaving an Appeals hearing in Baton Rouge, Léon Savois introduced me to his son, Jamie, a strapping youth of twelve now, nearly as tall as his father, who could have ended up another statistic four years ago. “You remember my father and mother?” Léon asked me when Auguste and Angelle walked over to them. He patted his father on the back.

“Of course. Nice to see you again,” I said, shaking both their hands. Angelle’s eyes sparkled with pride as her grandson put his arm around her prodigious waist.

Léon informed me about the new drilling contract in the Gulf that he and Marc LeBlanc had agreed on, and it looked like they’d continue working together on future projects. Léon’s father was one of several witnesses who had been called to testify about the catastrophic environmental degradation of Lake Chevreuil since the inundation. Of course, Auguste, who said on the stand that he had always despised “that damn jack-up stuck right there in the middle of my fishin’ lake,” and that now, “They ain’t no more fish in there to catch,” had no qualms about saying exactly what he thought under oath, a characteristic of many a Cajun creeping up on 80. His candor, spoken often in the local franglais, had caused an occasional ripple of laughter to lighten the mood in the courtroom and a sporadic rap of the gavel for order.

Léon had been subpoenaed to testify on Doucet Drilling’s behalf, and along with other character witnesses, like Placide, Earlene, Sid Ardoin, and Eric Arcenaux, had managed to clear Doucet Drilling’s name of complicity in the scheme. And Candace Soileau, who had taken my advice and come to work for Doucet, had also testified in defense of Doucet, as well as confirming Joseph Haggerty’s complicity in supplying the faulty map.

Jack and Mable Brouillette also came over to say hello. If Mable still felt any resentment toward Marlisa, she kept it at bay when she saw Marlisa’s arm in mine. Jack and some other salt miners had testified in more than one trial on the intentionally destructive practices at the salt mine even before Armstrong took over. It was finally determined that the company had intentionally allowed the mine to deteriorate, knowing it would soon collapse anyway. Or rather, assisted in its deterioration. Its imminent destruction was originally planned by then CEO Huff, before Armstrong ever arrived on the scene to join him and to clean up on insider trading, accounting fraud, racketeering, and bogus insurance claims.

By now I had begun to understand how Father, in his grief after losing Mother, could just bury himself in work instead of family. It seemed the more I searched for clues to his murder, the more I understood that his icy demeanor, previously a mystery to me, had really been a defense mechanism in a corrupt world. Besides being a cynic, he was a romantic and an idealist. But born in an era when men were supposed to be tough, he never dared to let down his guard and show it. I could relate. I guess I had become just like him. I think I even figured out why he had so overtly favored Victor. My closer resemblance to Mother would have been a constant reminder of his loss and unarticulated grief. With all his bravado, he simply couldn’t bear the pain. Nor could he admit his weakness to anyone, not even to himself. Finally, my angst had turned to empathy. Father had lived a lonely and tragic life that ended in a lonely and tragic death.

Thanks to Marlisa, I was finally erasing some of the stench I had picked up working on the case. Now I could see how snubbing my nose at the business and joining the Air Force would have been a personal affront to Father. The business was his life after Mother died. And fighting all the fraud, an inevitable accompaniment to corporate greed, had ended that life. I was proud that instead of joining the corruption, he had kept up the good fight until the end. He was a stoic, a rare breed, and deserved a better legacy than the ungrateful son I had become.

Not surprisingly, Victor’s trial joined the throng of court trials. Not his first rodeo, of course. I had sometimes considered whether he might have been involved in the insider trading leading up to the inundation. But he’d been too preoccupied with completely egocentric concerns to have a clue of what was going on in Father’s world. Besides, none of the big fish would have trusted him enough to include him in their intricate insider trading scheme. No, Victor’s problems were on a much smaller scale and involved immediate gratification at any cost. It seems he had finally had a run-in with another irate husband, unfortunately a man he also owed a huge gambling debt to, and ended up doing some time for aggravated assault.

Fortunately for the business, Father had come to his senses and written Vic out of ownership of Doucet Drilling but left him enough money to live comfortably without ever having to lift a finger again, which was probably a stroke of genius on Father’s part, though it left Victor with too much time to get into scrapes and too much money to lose at the craps table. Vic had tried to contest the will for a few months, but soon realized he had come out of it well-set, stopped doling out his inheritance to attorneys, and stopped going around the office to hassle those who remained. Sadly, he no longer considered me family. His resentment, despite his nest egg, was still too great.

But I had begun to see through Victor’s resentment to his vulnerabilities and insecurities. Hell, hadn’t I harbored my own resentment for years? After all, we shared not only DNA, but also the same unfortunate experience of living in a shattered family with surrogate parents, who, despite being the next best things to parents, could never quite replace in our minds our real mother, nor the father who had virtually deserted us. Victor and I had merely acquired contrasting coping mechanisms: Victor plied himself with material goods and fast women to replace the lack of love; I simply escaped New Iberia at my first opportunity, dragging all my animosity with me. Neither option could have proved successful. I couldn’t fault Victor anymore. I could only blame all our flaws on a circumstantially dysfunctional family and an indifferent universe.

I vowed that one of my long-term goals would be to mend our shattered fences if Vic ever decided he was ready for us to make amends. So far, the prospect loomed far in the distance, like looking through the wrong end of a telescope. But after my experiences of the last four years, I was the first to admit that one never knows what the future might hold. I hoped that one day Vic would realize we were the only family left and let go of his animosity instead of his money for a change.

I had returned to Seymour-Johnson to finish my last few years in the Air Force. The moment I hit my twenty years, I took my retirement and, instead of becoming CEO of Doucet Drilling, I took a job as a safety engineer with OSHA. Instead of delving into big oil, I would instead be striving to keep big oil and other Louisiana industries in line with safety and health procedures. I vowed not to cut anyone any slack, including Doucet Drilling.

Doucet Drilling had kept Marc LeBlanc on as permanent CEO. I was on the board as part-owner, my main goal keeping anything resembling our past experience from ever happening again.

Thankfully, Earlene stayed on as office manager and efficiency expert. And no words can describe how valuable Placide still was to the company. If not for Placide, I wouldn’t be here to tell the story. Always vigilant, always faithful, he was the family I never really had. And I guess we were also the family he never had. He was a man of few words, but we had made a fiercely loyal team. I no longer needed a bodyguard, but he remained my closest friend and confidant.

I could only imagine how long it would have taken Vic to get rid of those two gems, Placide and Earlene, if Father had not finally seen the light. I was sorry I hadn’t gotten to know Father after he realized what his indulgence had caused Vic to become, though he would probably never have admitted it anyway. His disappointment would have been both profound and repressed. Father would have been proud of his team: Earlene, Placide, and Marc. Hopefully, he would have eventually forgiven me for not entering the business.

Uncle Louis had met his maker peacefully a couple of years ago at Christmas. His weak heart finally just gave up. Aunt Ethel found him in bed Christmas Eve morning after she had risen early and prepared him a peach cobbler. At least, she liked thinking, he died peacefully in his bed. Isn’t that how we’d all like to go, after all?

I had already returned to the airbase by then, so I wasn’t home to console her that morning. But she had the presence of mind to call Placide, who was there like a shot, Earlene told me. He had kept his small apartment nearby in New Iberia so he could keep an eye on them, still insisting they were the only family he knew. Eric Arcenaux, whom Louis had taken a liking to, gave Placide a break by keeping an eye on Ethel and Louis sometimes during his two weeks off every month. Arcenaux had continued giving Louis a hand in the “back forty,” especially with any heavy work. He also kept up with Ethel after Louis was gone and gave her a reason to keep making those cobblers.

Not that Aunt Ethel wasn’t as strong as an ox. She still rose early, to “take care” of the old place, she said. She could still wield a paintbrush or a screwdriver as well as a spatula. And she still told me I’d be the death of her whenever she got the chance, of course. But I figured it would take more than her nephew’s reckless antics to bring that tough old bird down.

I had immediately taken a few days’ liberty and returned to Louisiana for the funeral, where I found two yellow roses in a bud vase. That’s when Marlisa told me the story of the roses and finally considered a more lasting relationship.

Of course, Aunt Ethel also loved Marlisa. Who wouldn’t? So, she finally stayed off my case about settling down. I guess she saw hope for me yet. She hadn’t stopped begging for “little Doucets” one day, though, and I knew she never would until I provided some. She wasn’t waiting for Vic, that’s for sure. Any Doucets he sired would likely not bear the name, legally anyway.

I had encouraged Marlisa to finish the degree program she had abandoned when she married Charles. She was now a Louisiana history teacher at Catholic High in New Iberia. She had helped me brush up on my dance steps, so you might see the two of us doing the Cajun waltz on any given night at one of the many Cajun hotspots and festivals within a fifty-mile radius of New Iberia.

More often than not, the outcomes of the trials that still trailed on in appeals after four years shocked and disappointed all of us. It seemed the higher up the economic scale and the worse the crime, the lighter the sentence.

Luckily for Dallas Matherne, after his extradition from Costa Rica, he had turned state’s evidence at Sarah Beth’s prodding. And what a story he had to tell. His testimony of a large monetary gain for ensuring that the bogus map was followed implicated the masterminds of the plot. After serving his two-year sentence, he was placed in the witness protection program, essentially for being a rat, but Sarah Beth had refused to join him for the same reason.

Sarah Beth had long since wised up, divorced Dallas, and instead of moving back to Tennessee with her parents, had, for the last three months, been Mrs. Sid Ardoin, Sid’s first marriage having dissolved after another of his wife’s indiscretions at the honky-tonk. Marc LeBlanc had promoted Sid to Project Manager at Doucet, a wise choice in my view.

The various trials had gradually brought the intricate web of crime and corruption to light. As the agriculture and oil businesses were approaching free-fall during the oil crisis, this cabal of corporate execs, lobbyists, and politicians had concocted the scheme to walk away with millions each.

After the FBI investigation, plus the documents we had provided and the FOIA documents, federal prosecutors empaneled the Grand Jury, who issued indictments to Treasury Secretary Huff, Louisiana Governor Mansur, Warren Armstrong, Carl and Joseph Haggerty, and a few of the other major stockholders, for conspiracy to commit fraud, racketeering, and insider trading. Of course, the federal investigations and trials of Carl Haggerty and Huff in DC had dragged on, and some appeals were ongoing, but those defendants were spitting in the wind. All they could hope for now were pardons from a sympathetic president down the road.

Sid Ardoin’s testimony of Deslatte’s insider trading, illegal toxic waste dumping, and fraudulent conveyance, on top of his other charges, had already netted Deslatte five years up the river and a sizable fine for polluting, considering the destruction to the environment and lives his business had caused. He had sold his business at enough profit to live comfortably, but he’d never be a multi-millionaire again. The EPA had monitored cleanup of the toxic sludge pit. We could only hope they would continue to monitor the facility more closely under the new owner. And I’d be visiting them periodically in my new OSHA capacity, just to make sure there was no backsliding.

The new, altered map, along with the new drilling company, new oil company, and all new employees, was the coup that kept the correct map a secret, with Haggerty’s help in DNR. Then came the planned inundation of the failing salt mine with Matherne as a mole in Doucet Drilling to make sure it came off without a hitch, at least for the major players, following massive stock selloffs. Top all that off by paying a few dozen officials exorbitant bribes, and the plan seemed fool-proof. And if a few people got killed in the bargain, it was apparently worth the sacrifice. I was proud to be the one to punch a hole in their overinflated egos, though the sentences were a joke.

Armstrong was finally sentenced to a million-dollar fine and ten years in a white-collar prison, with possibility for parole in five. “A slap on the wrist and a tennis complex with a couple of guards,” I whispered to Placide when we heard that verdict.

Oh, there were some hefty fines involved to divvy up among victims’ families, but not even a drop in the bucket compared to what their crimes netted them in profit or what the families had lost in property, pensions, and lives of loved ones.

The two dirty Special Agents in the Chevy Blazer that Placide and I shot, it turns out, had been appointed and probably well paid by Treasury Secretary Huff. Of course, they were unable to testify, indisposed as they were. I suspected some time would be added to Huff’s sentence at his sentence hearing, considering the extreme measures he had taken to keep his crimes from being discovered.

I had furnished prosecutors with contact information for Jake Richard, the oilfield worker who had witnessed the thugs trying to flip my car four years ago. His testimony sealed their complicity in the fraud from the beginning of the ordeal to its sordid end on Highway 90 in Patterson. And Placide testified that the same vehicle had reportedly ended Gremillion’s life in the Atchafalaya Basin. As it turns out, those two thugs in the Blazer had also paid dearly with theirs.

As for the cowboy with expensive boots in the blue pickup, he had simply faded back into the vast sea of scum, likely somewhere in Tennessee, probably awaiting another opportunity as a hired killer. Dawkins’s “suicide” had never been solved, but I figured the cowboy was the hired killer behind it. At least Captain Gordon in Memphis hadn’t given up on finding him, so there was slim hope. But Gordon was pretty sure the blue truck had been repainted and sent to Mexico by now, so all he had left to go on were alligator boots and a beer gut, a pretty common sight in a place like Memphis. Placide had flown up there to look at some mugshots but didn’t recognize any of them. It was likely it would take another crime for that scum to rise to the surface. Only then would we learn for sure who hired him, but I hadn’t given up hope that he’d eventually hang himself. Thugs usually do. Even something as simple as a traffic ticket would dredge him up.

Fortunately, Placide’s and my self-defense pleas held up, based on the indisputable evidence of the bullet holes in the Torino, photos of my wounded shoulder and glass shard cuts in my face, in addition to testimony by several eyewitnesses who had landed in the pile-up of twisted metal on the scene.

Nothing much had changed otherwise. Governor Mansur was re-elected by the good people of Louisiana despite his awaiting appeal on various charges. President Stanton had wisely removed Secretary Huff immediately from his cabinet position while Huff awaited his appeal.

Father’s name was cleared of any suspicion of involvement in the inundation after the facts came out. And prosecutors were able to pin the sleeping pill overdose on the two special agents. Aunt Ethel finally thanked me for clearing Father’s name, despite her misgivings about my involvement in the investigation. A devout Catholic, she was relieved to know she’d be seeing Father again when she joined Louis in heaven, where she was sure Father would be waiting, notwithstanding the errors he had made as a mere mortal. I was convinced that Father had discovered the selloff and the inundation scheme, and those high-level thugs were paid to shut him up, just as they had wanted to shut me up. Until we put a crimp in their style, they had pulled off what they thought was the perfect crime.

Mostly, I was relieved that it was all over. On one hand, it seemed as though I had lost four years of my life. On the other, I had gained more in that four years than in my entire previous life. Oh, I was still a cynic, especially when it came to the corporate oligarchy that was whittling away at what we call democracy, including big oil, with its continued destruction of Louisiana, thanks to tax breaks, subsidies, and lax regulations. But I finally realized that, like Marlisa, and like Father for that matter, I was becoming a romantic. I just hadn’t been dealt a hand before that allowed me to realize any inherent goodness in people.

Oh, the bad apples would still be there, of course, festering away and trying to rot the rest of the apples. Greed would continue to result in an exponentially widening gap between rich and poor. The justice system would continue to reward corporate greed with lighter sentences than the underclass. Unregulated and rampant pollution would continue to erode the very core of civilization.

But the strong ones, the basically good ones, could keep the rot of corruption from touching them. Marlisa was just such a person. The others I had surrounded myself with had the same trait. We would stick together to ward off the stench of greedy players like Armstrong, Deslatte, the Haggertys, Mansur, and Huff. Their greed would reap its own reward in a lonely life, a complete absence of trust in anyone or belief in the inherent good of their fellow man, and more money than they could possibly spend in a lifetime. Hell, if you live in stench, you can only smell stench. I had had my fill of stench.

Marlisa and I stood hand in hand in front of the Appeals Court in Baton Rouge after another of Joseph Haggerty’s unsuccessful appeals. Besides Haggerty’s part in supplying the faulty map, Sid Ardoin’s records from Deslattes’s Shale Processing Plant had implicated Haggerty in the fraud and insider trading for unloading Sapphire stock, and for his connections to his brother Carl’s fraud in DC. This was his last shot before his turn up the river.

After we said our goodbyes to Placide, Sid, and the others outside the courthouse, I asked Marlisa to accompany me to The Village Restaurant, a favorite hangout of politicians in downtown Baton Rouge, for dinner over a bottle of Chardonnay. The tiny velvet ring box was burning a hole in the pocket of my khakis. Tonight was the night I’d pop the question, and I had a feeling this might be the night she would say yes. I was already picturing a honeymoon in Nassau, where I hoped to introduce her to two young friends of mine, probably nearly Jamie’s age now, and have them dive for a conch shell for her, if they were still budding capitalists. I wasn’t about to let this vision get away, no matter how long it took.