After the appearance of the appropriate classified advertisement in the Havana Post, there was an exchange of telephone calls between John Bone and his prospective employers that resulted in an agreement to meet face-to-face in New Orleans on Friday, April 21, a date and venue agreeable to both parties. In aid of that meeting Bone had been sent a Chicago and Southern Airlines ticket for a flight that would have brought him in to Shushan Airport on Lake Pontchartrain on the morning of the meeting but he elected to ignore the ticket and instead booked passage on the United Fruit Company steamer S.S. Tivives. The comfortable two-day voyage on the well-equipped cargo–passenger vessel left Bone rested, relaxed and in New Orleans a full twenty-four hours before he was expected to arrive.
The Tivives docked at the Thalia Street pier shortly after eight in the morning after the last slow leg of the journey up from the Gulf of Mexico. It was hot, without a hint of cloud in a weak blue sky, but the air seemed almost palpably damp – normal weather for New Orleans. Bone left the ship and went through a cursory customs and immigration check, travelling on a well-worn Canadian passport identifying him as a petroleum engineer named Edwin Dow. The passport was quite legitimate, although Dow had been dead for the last six years – a victim of yellow fever in the jungles of Uruguay while looking for likely drilling sites on behalf of British Petroleum.
When the passport came into Bone’s hands it was almost out-of-date so he simply removed Dow’s photograph, replaced it with one of himself and then had it renewed at the Canadian Consulate in Montevideo. A year ago he’d renewed it again, this time at the embassy in Havana, further muddying the trail of his adopted identity.
Leaving the immense, swelteringly hot passenger shed he carried his single small bag onto the street and out of the sickly sweet reek emanating from the banana warehouse next door. He found a taxi at the stand in front of the shed’s main doors. Following Bone’s instructions the driver headed up to Tchoupitoulas Street, then turned right until they reached Canal Street. They swung onto the broad avenue with its paved centre boulevard of so-called neutral ground and then drove north-west into the hotel and theatre district, the broad hazy breadth of the Mississippi retreating behind them.
The driver turned left onto Baronne Street and deposited Bone in front of the huge, red-brick pile of the seven-hundred-room Hotel Roosevelt. He went to the front desk, announced himself as Edwin Dow, with a confirmed reservation made by telegram from Havana. The clerk gave him his key. Bone waved off the bellhop and took the elevator up to his room. Depositing his case on the bed, he removed a lightweight, pale green cotton shirt, equally lightweight cotton trousers, fresh socks and a pair of cool, open-weave rattan loafers. He also took out a small, cased pair of Zeiss binoculars and the most recent edition of the AAA guide for the eastern United States. That done, he went to the adjoining bathroom and showered.
Refreshed, he returned to the bedroom, changed into the clothes he’d laid out and then used the AAA guide to find a nearby garage where he could hire a motor car for the next three or four days. He found one on Gravier Street only a few blocks over from the hotel, which promised to deliver a vehicle to him within the hour.
Pleased with his progress so far, Bone picked up the binoculars, went down to the coffee shop, bought a newspaper and ate a light breakfast of poached eggs and dry toast, then went to the cigar store in the lobby. He purchased a road map of New Orleans and its environs, a small pocket diary with its own pencil, two bottles of Pepsi-Cola from the cooler and an odd-looking souvenir bottle opener in the shape of what appeared to be a flattened crawfish. He also purchased a pair of green- lensed Cool Ray sunglasses from a display beside the cash register and wore them out of the shop.
With the strap of the binocular case over his shoulder, his purchases in a brown paper bag and the folded newspaper under his arm, Bone went back to the lobby, where he found the young delivery driver from the garage already waiting for him. Bone filled out and signed the rental form and paid a twenty dollar cash deposit. Using the road map and the stub of a pencil, the driver showed Bone the best and shortest route to his destination before they went out to the car.
The vehicle waiting at the curb was a dark blue Ford, six or seven years old by its boxy, squared-off look, but well kept and in good running condition according to the young man from the garage. It had been freshly oiled and watered and the gas tank was full. Bone got behind the wheel, took a moment to familiarise himself with the controls, then drove the young man back to the Gravier Street garage, promising to return the car sometime before the following Monday. Bone checked his watch. It was now ten o’clock.
Leaving the garage he continued on down Gravier Street until he found himself back in the riverfront district. He jogged slightly, putting himself onto a much-narrowed Canal Street, then thumped across the jumble of interweaving railway lines and drove down to the ferry slip squeezed in between a pair of giant, rusty-roofed warehouses. It was well past the morning rush and he had no trouble getting a spot on the broad-beamed flatboat. Ten minutes later, with the half-mile breadth of the sluggish mud-coloured river behind it, the ferry pulled in to the Boumy Street pier at Algiers Point.
On the east bank of the Mississippi, New Orleans had grown into a modern, industrialised city but Algiers on the west bank, without a connecting bridge and isolated except for the ferry, had retained its original river-town flavour. There were no skyscrapers or grand cathedrals here. The tallest buildings in Algiers were grain elevators and the churches were small and usually made of wood.
The streets were paved with asphalt now, and there was electricity here as well, but the casual visitor was more likely to see Algiers as a rough-and-ready bayou town than as the Fifteenth Ward and Fifth District of the great city of New Orleans. The best food in Algiers was the pickled egg and pretzel lunches in the bars on Opelousas Avenue, the best entertainment in the semi-public gambling houses run by Sylvestro ‘Sam’ Carolla and his friends and the best women in the single cribs and brothels that hugged the low, mean streets around the Southern Pacific yards.
Following the pencilled instructions on his map, John Bone turned left towards the point itself. Reaching the old Johnson Iron Works and Shipyard he turned right onto Patterson Avenue, following it along the downstream course of the river until he reached the tall chain-link fence surrounding the abandoned Algiers Naval Air Station. The barbed wire on top of the fence was brown with rust and the hangars and buildings were paint-faded, their windows grimy and smashed. Even from the road Bone could see that the runways were cracked and weedy and it didn’t look as though the straw-like stands of grass between the buildings had been cut for years.
Boxing the compass on three sides, Bone skirted the desolate acreage, eventually returning to the unpaved public road that stretched out along the levee above the muddy currents of the broad, snaking river. On the far side, just visible through the heat haze, were the Poland Street docks and the narrow entrance to the ship canal that led up to Lake Pontchartrain.
At the old Quarantine Station Bone followed his directions and turned right down a narrow oiled road bearing a single sign indicating that he was now on the way to the village of Behrman and State Highway 31. Algiers was all but gone now, the townscape replaced by small truck farms and undeveloped grazing land posted with signs advertising a variety of futures for people willing to put down ten per cent on their dream house of tomorrow. By the weathering of the placards and the empty land it didn’t look as though there were too many takers.
At State Highway 31 he turned left again and drove for a mile or so, passing the entrance road leading to the Alvin Callender Airport, New Orleans’s first, its single runway and out-of-date facilities now relegated to use by cargo operators and small charter companies. According to the signs he was now nine miles from New Orleans proper. Bone finally reached the Mississippi once again at Belle Chasse, a down-at-the-heels plantation house and property that stood like a languorous, time-wilted monument to the past. Directly across were the clattering ramps, cranes and rail yards of the Seatrain terminal, a huge, noisy operation that lifted entire freight cars of produce onto waiting ships that would take them downriver to the gulf and eventually to Havana or Edgewater, New Jersey.
At Belle Chasse, Louisiana State 31 hooked hard right following the levee but Bone turned instead onto the one-lane country road that ran north. On the landward side of the road there were smallholding cotton fields and acreage planted in slash pine. On the river side were the long rolling fields of an indigo plantation long since gone to seed and scrub, the perimeters of the fields barely defined by rickety rail fences half turned to rot and lines of low trees planted for windbreaks every hundred yards or so.
The entranceway to the plantation was marked by a pair of rusty iron gates and a stone fence choked with vines. On the far side of the gates two lines of twisted, arthritic oak trees flanked a rutted carriageway leading up to a low hill close to the levee. Perched on the hill, overlooking the river and the fields, was an old plantation house, smaller than Belle Chasse and not as old but in much worse shape. The name of the plantation was still visible, worked into the scrolled wrought-iron design of the gates: LA FLORA.
Bone drove on for another half mile, making sure that the car couldn’t be seen by anyone driving in towards the plantation. He pulled the car up into the shade of half a dozen cypress trees that stood in a cluster by the side of the road, their limbs hung with long grey rags of Spanish moss. He switched off the engine, climbed out of the car and raised the hood, propping it open, then went back for his binoculars and the bag containing the two bottles of soda pop, the bottle opener and the pocket diary he’d purchased from the cigar store in the lobby of the Hotel Roosevelt. Anyone happening along the road would assume that the owner of the car had gone looking for a garage.
Carrying his supplies, Bone headed out across a wedge-shaped field that led to a low, boomerang-shaped ridge, its crest topped with willow and alder. The indigo fields hadn’t been worked for a good thirty or forty years but the snake patterning of the plant rows meant to prevent erosion was still vaguely discernible even though the low-growing legumes had gone to seed decades before. At one end of the ridge there was a small, ramshackle building, and just beyond it, weaving down through the trees, Bone could see the twinkling line of a small stream as it jumped and twisted down the rocks. A spring, obviously, and the building had probably once been a pump house, built to carry cool, fresh water to the house.
Reaching the foot of the ridge, Bone made his way up to the treed crest, keeping well below it as he worked his way across to the source of the stream, a small pool almost directly above the old pump house. The pool was no bigger than a round dining table, fringed with moss and giving the air a fresh, earthy tang. Bone found a narrow stone ledge no more than a foot below the surface and immersed the two bottles of Pepsi in the chilly water. He turned away, crouched down and made his way to the edge of the trees, taking care to keep himself fully in the dappling shadows cast by their leaves and branches.
Below him the ridge dropped down steeply to a sweeping field of tall grass, tips brown and wilted with the heat. Only the hundred feet or so directly around the house had been roughly trimmed down, probably with a handheld scythe, just the way Bone had seen barley mown when he was a small child in Drumdean so long ago.
The two-storeyed house was of good size, at least forty or fifty feet on a side, columns rising all around in the Greek Revival style of the early 1800s. The straight mansard roof was copper gone dull, streaked verdigris and topped with a square cupola set with a pair of windows on each side. Most of the glass in the cupola windows was gone and half the windows of the house itself were smashed as well.
Except for the freshly cut grass, La Flora appeared to be derelict. There were only small clues that spoke of recent attention. Two of the tall windows to the left of the heavy-looking double doors were still intact and gleamed as though they had been freshly washed. On the front and side verandas, leaves and other refuse had been swept into several neat piles, ready to be collected and disposed of. Bone took the binoculars out of their case and took a closer look at La Flora, keeping the lenses out of the sun to prevent reflections.
Using the binoculars he quickly picked up the shadowy marks of tyre tracks in the newly cut grass and followed them to a large outbuilding behind the house. One of the outbuilding doors was slightly open and Bone could see the glint of sunlight on a motor car’s brightwork. He turned his attention back to the house, scanning the windows carefully. A moment later he caught a hint of movement in the cupola. Keeping the binoculars steady he waited and the movement came again, the silhouette of a seated man, regularly bringing his hand up to his mouth – someone smoking a cigarette, posted as a lookout.
Bone put down the binoculars and closed his eyes, listening. A cicada was sounding in the distance, like a high-pitched trill in his ear. There was the faint sound of the little stream behind him. He focused harder, pushing the natural sounds away, trying to pick out anything else, anything out of place. Eventually it came, very faintly, a cough from inside the house, repeated twice, and then the sound of hard shoes on wooden floors.
He opened his eyes again, used his index finger to wipe away a few beads of stinging sweat and looked down at the bed of brown and green pine needles in front of him. Lit brilliantly in a patch of hot sun a few feet away was the carcass of a bird, a jay from the colour of its feathers, its breast a cage of gristle and bones that fluttered with the nervous movement of dozens of iridescent bluebottle flies, their maggot castings piled like tiny tubes of parchment beneath the fragile ribs. The flesh of the head was desiccated down to skull and yellow beak, the eyes withered, sucked dry of life by the sun. A line of ants marched up from the splayed, curled feet and disappeared into the cave of the dead bird’s corpse.
Bone smiled, enjoying the simple elegance of the small, unmarked tragedy and transformation, then edged back deeper into the shadows before climbing to his feet. He went back to the pool, took out one of the Pepsi-Colas and opened it with the crawfish device. He drank the Pepsi slowly, enjoying the cold sweet bite of the soda, thinking about what he had seen. He put the bottle down, took out the little diary and used the pencil it came with to quickly sketch the layout of La Flora. The upper rooms could be discounted with the exception of the cupola since tomorrow’s meeting would almost certainly take place on the ground floor.
If it was like other homes of its kind Bone had seen before, the interior would be divided into three main rooms, a dining room to the right, a larger living room to the left and a kitchen in the back. Between dining room and living room there would be a wide front hall and a staircase leading upward. Entrance at the front, exit through the kitchen and the only clear approach to the house being the lane through the aisle of oak trees stretching back from the main gate. Behind the house were the outbuildings and some upwardly sloping marshland leading to the levee and the river beyond. La Flora was like a funneling crayfish trap – once in, escape would be virtually impossible.
Bone finished the first of the two sodas then went back to his shadowed vantage point. Over the course of the next three quarters of an hour he spotted five men. One was black and carried a broom and pail. The other four wore dark suits and heavy shoes. Three of them were of average height with dark curly hair and Mediterranean features that were alike enough to suggest they were brothers or possibly close cousins. Sicilian, perhaps, Italian certainly, which meant that they were probably members of Sam Carolla’s New Orleans-based criminal organisation.
The fourth man had appeared carrying a hunting rifle and Bone assumed he had been the lookout in the cupola. He was taller than the other three, broad-chested and blond with pale, sunburned skin. He handed over the weapon to one of the Italians and lit a cigarette. Changing shifts, perhaps, arguing over whose turn it was to climb up onto the roof. It was just past noon now and the interior of the box-like cupola would be swelteringly hot.
Bone stayed in position and waited. Another hour passed with nothing of note occurring beyond the occasional sound of an aeroplane landing at the nearby airfield and, once, the distant shriek of a train whistle. Then, just after one o’clock, two cars, both Packards, both black and dusty, came down the lane between the oaks and parked in front of the house. Four more dark-suited men appeared out of the first car, their clothing and looks apparently cut from the same cloth as the other three Bone had already seen.
Three men climbed out of the second car and went up onto the front veranda of the house. These three, older, better dressed in lighter-coloured suits, ignored the younger men around them. One of them, in his late fifties or maybe even older, with the blowsy open face of a heavy drinker and thinning dark hair, was recognisable to Bone almost at once. He’d seen him from time to time in the casino of the Hotel Nacional in Havana and occasionally in the newspapers. This was Sam Carolla, boss of the New Orleans Mob, and by the looks of it he was taking the other two men on a tour of La Flora.
The heavier and shorter of the two men Carolla was guiding was clearly uncomfortable in the heat and mopped his forehead every few seconds with a large white handkerchief. The other man didn’t seem to be bothered at all. He was much taller than his companion, very tall, with large ears, a long nose and exceptionally fair skin that he protected with a white Stetson. After a few moments on the veranda Carolla and his guests disappeared inside the house.
Bone had seen enough. He eased back for a second time, then went to the pool and retrieved the full bottle of soda pop from its hiding place and put it and the already empty bottle and the crimped metal cap back into the paper bag. He slid the binoculars back into their case and walked back to the car, careful to keep the ridge at his back, blocking any potential view from the lookout in the cupola.
Returning to the motor car Bone lowered the hood, climbed in behind the wheel and opened the second bottle of Pepsi, holding it between his knees as he drove back down the country road, sipping the cold beverage as he put his thoughts in order. The reason for using La Flora was logical and clear. The property was away from prying eyes, relatively easy to secure and close to the old airport so that anyone flying in for the meeting could do so with anonymity but the very need for that anonymity was distressing since it meant that the men attending the meeting were well enough known to require such a high level of discretion.
Carolla’s presence was equally worrisome. Contrary to the lurid stories the yellow press reported, there was no code of silence within the Mob, in New Orleans or anywhere else. Given the right circumstances and incentives any one of them could be made to tell all that they knew. Conspiracies were dangerous, political ones even more so, and by all appearances this one was spreading out of control. As Bone drove back towards Algiers and the city he noticed a heavy line of deep grey clouds massing like a huge, dark curtain in the south. Before long it was going to rain and rain hard.
Bone was back in New Orleans just after three o’clock. He parked the car in the lot next to the hotel, returned to his room briefly to drop off the binoculars and the brown paper bag, then walked the few short blocks down to the main branch of the public library on Lee Circle. The large building, designed in what Bone liked to call the Roman Temple tradition, had a more than adequate supply of newspapers and periodicals in the main reading room as well as a superior clipping file. Within an hour, diary and pencil in hand, Bone had names for most of the people he had seen that afternoon.
He had been right in his immediate identification of Sam Carolla and the three similar-looking young men of Italian origin were Carlos, Peter and Michael Marcello, all of them associated with various enterprises of Carolla’s. The tall blond man with the rifle was one James Moran, also an employee of Carolla and previously a bodyguard of the assassinated former governor of Louisiana, the infamous Huey Long, the ‘Kingfish.’
Far more important were the two men Sam Carolla had been taking on a tour of the old plantation house. The heavyset man continuously mopping his face was Huey Long’s deputy, a one-time Bible-thumping minister from Wisconsin named Gerald L. Smith. A look at his recent clippings file was revealing – it was almost empty. Since Long’s murder, Gerald Smith’s standing had fallen to an all-time low. Within days of the murder of his one-time boss in September 1935, the various factions within the Kingfish machine had begun squabbling over who would succeed their fallen leader in the Senate, who would be the next governor and, most important, who would control Long’s immense financial war chest.
Smith had been pushed out of the running almost immediately by Louisiana insiders, including Huey Long’s brother. The best the preacher had been able to do since then was insert himself into the madcap but popular Old Age Revolving Pension movement being vigorously promoted in California by a white-haired doctor from the Black Hills of South Dakota named Francis Everett Townsend. Apparently Smith had now also inserted himself into the meeting at La Flora scheduled for the following day.
The second man with Carolla was also interesting but for different reasons. A thirty-one-year-old, recently elected Texas Democratic congressman from the oil-powerful Tenth District who had strong ties to the man who had helped put him there – John Nance Garner, thirty years a Texas congressman and senator and now the vice president of the United States. The young Texan’s name was Lyndon Baines Johnson and according to his file of clippings he knew how to pull all the right patronage levers in Washington. What a collection – the local Mob, a washed-up back-room boy and a give-a-favour get-a-favour congressman with less than a single term under his belt. Bone returned the clipping envelopes to the periodicals desk and left the library.
He walked back to the hotel, noting that the clouds he’d seen coming up from the south on his return from La Flora were now massing overhead. As he reached the Roosevelt and ducked under the awning over the main entrance on Baronne Street it began to pour. Bone went up to his room and lay down on the bed, watching the heavy rain smear the glass of the window, tapping on the panes with small, skeletal clicking sounds, ghostly, ancient come-hithers he tried to ignore.
On the wall at the end of the bed was a cheaply framed and poorly rendered watercolour of a yacht race on Lake Pontchartrain, the sky an unbelievable blue, two boats running with the wind but in opposite directions on dead-calm water unruffled by any breeze at all. The work of an amateur.
Amateur, of course, was the operative word. In his experience it was the very amateurishness of the people who wanted his services that made the purchase of those particular services necessary. By nature those of his profession were a breed apart. Virtually all men who killed for a cause wound up dying for it as well. He’d seen enough of that from his brethren in Ireland and more again on his travels.
Listening to the rain, Bone lifted his hands up in front of his face and examined them. They were relatively small but the fingers were long and very strong. Over time, though, his knuckles had thickened and ropes of vein and tendon had begun to appear. The skin itself seemed to have lost much of its elasticity and had turned to a faintly shiny parchment texture. He thought about the dead bird on the ridge above La Flora and wondered what had brought about its death. An incautious movement? A split second of careless inattention? A trick of the sun that had blinded the creature for a fatal instant?
John Bone clenched his fists and felt small twinges of painful tension that he wouldn’t have felt ten years ago. Not arthritis, just age. He was closer to forty than he thought he’d ever be and if his hands didn’t betray him soon it would be his eyes. Buying the Cool Rays in the lobby shop had been a necessity; his eyes were far more sensitive to light than they’d been only a few years ago and any kind of glare was painful. At night, his depth perception was half of what it used to be. Any work requiring the cover of darkness was now out of the question. This job and perhaps one or two more after it and then he would be forced into retirement by his own physical inadequacies.
On returning from the library John Bone’s initial reaction had been to pack his bag and leave, taking the first available transportation back to Havana. Instead he turned to the night table and picked up the telephone. He first placed a call to the Shushan Airport Terminal on Lake Pontchartrain and then, with the help of the hotel operator, he was connected to a number in New York City. The call to New York was answered on the second ring.
‘Yes?’ The voice had the slightly muffled electrical echo of most long-distance calls.
‘I’d like to speak to Uncle Charles,’ Bone said quietly.
‘This is Uncle Charles.’
‘Do you know who this is?’
‘Yes,’ answered the voice from New York. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘Yes. The venue for the meeting is now unacceptable.’
‘It was acceptable to you before.’
‘Not any longer.’
‘May I ask why?’
‘Certainly,’ said Bone. ‘It would appear that your people are now employing the services of the Carolla family in New Orleans. It would also appear that a number of other people will be at the meeting, including a congressman from Texas and the ex-assistant of a United States senator, now deceased.’ Bone paused. ‘The presence of either one of these men at any possible meeting is also unacceptable.’
‘Why is that?’ The voice wasn’t particularly defensive, just curious.
‘Too many people are involved in this already. These men are politicians. Politicians are by their very nature unable to keep secrets for very long.’
‘Two people can keep a secret as long as one of them is dead,’ said the voice from New York.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘A quote from Benjamin Franklin,’ the voice explained. There was a long pause. ‘There must be a meeting to conclude our business.’ He paused again. ‘There are terms to be discussed.’
‘Not with those men. And not in that place.’
‘Then who?’
‘You,’ said Bone. ‘And one other. No more than that.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘Yes,’ said Bone. ‘I won’t risk being here more than another day.’
‘I suppose I could get a flight out this evening.’
‘You can,’ said Bone. ‘I checked to make sure. There’s an Eastern Airlines flight leaving Newark Airport at ten-thirty tonight travelling by way of Washington and Atlanta. It arrives in New Orleans at seven-thirty in the morning.’
The pause was shorter this time. ‘All right.’
‘Will you be alone?’ Bone asked.
‘No. I’ll have one other person with me if he can arrange to get on the flight in Washington.’
‘All right.’
‘How do I contact you?’
‘Check into the Roosevelt Hotel under the name Thorn. I’ll leave a message for you saying where and when the meeting will take place.’ Bone hung up the telephone. He looked out the window; the rain had ended as quickly as it had begun.
John Bone spent the remainder of the day making arrangements for the following day’s meeting, which included renting a room above a restaurant in the French Quarter. With his business done, Bone walked over to Canal Street, then a few short blocks down to Royal Street. He bought an old suitcase at a pawnshop on the corner then walked another block over to the Hotel Monteleone, almost as large as the Roosevelt and equally anonymous.
He checked in, paid for three nights’ lodging in advance and after dropping his empty suitcase off in his room he went down to the hotel’s Carousel Lounge with its slightly idiotic revolving bar, had a drink and then enjoyed a crab cake dinner in the hotel dining room. Appetite satisfied, he went back to his room, switched on the complimentary radio to the Monteleone’s own radio station, WDSU. At that time of the evening the local station combined with the NBC Blue Network and for the better part of an hour Bone lay in the dark listening to Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians doing a medley of songs from Show Boat. Eventually he fell asleep.
At 10:00 a.m. the following morning John Bone stood in the shadows of a doorway across the street from the restaurant he’d chosen and watched as a bright yellow Nola cab pulled up in front. The restaurant, Antoine’s on St Louis Street, occupied the main and second floors of a well-kept four-storey building. As Bone had discovered the previous afternoon, the shuttered rooms on the third and fourth floors were accessible by walking up a staircase leading from the ornate ironwork of the second-floor veranda.
Two men climbed out of the cab. As the taxi drove off Bone saw that both men were dressed in dark three-piece suits far too heavy for New Orleans weather. The shorter of the two men had grey hair, wore metal-rimmed spectacles and had a moustache. He appeared to be in his mid-forties. The second man, broad-chested, big-bellied and at least ten years older than his companion, had dark thinning hair brushed back from a broad forehead and large, slightly protruding eyes. He was clean-shaven, wore no glasses and smoked a large black cigar.
Bone kept watch as the two men consulted with a white-aproned man sweeping the sidewalk in front of the restaurant’s dark-panelled entrance. The man with the spectacles and moustache reached into his pocket, took out a folded bill then pressed it into the sweeper’s hand. The Negro nodded, leaned his broom up against the open doorway and led the two men into the restaurant. A few moments later, the two men, alone now, reappeared on the fire escape and climbed slowly up to the fourth floor of the building. The bigger man seemed to have some difficulty and paused several times before they reached a small, metal-grated platform at the top of the fire escape. Finally, the two men stepped through the open French doors set into the dormer and disappeared into the room Bone had rented for the meeting.
Bone, who had been at his post across the street for almost an hour before the arrival of the two men, waited five minutes more, making sure that they had come alone. When he was satisfied he crossed the street, entered the restaurant and followed the two men up into the fourth-floor room.
At John Bone’s request the room had been emptied of all furniture except a small plain desk and three chairs. Two of the chairs had their backs to the French doors, while the third had its back to the door that led to an interior staircase. At Bone’s request the door had been locked from the inside, ensuring that the only way in or out was via the exterior fire escape. The two men had taken the chairs obviously meant for them. As Bone stepped down into the room they both turned to look at him. Looking over the shoulder of the grey-haired man with the spectacles and the moustache, Bone saw that he already had a stenographer’s notebook and a pen ready on the table.
‘I’d advise against putting anything down on paper,’ said Bone. ‘For everyone’s sake.’ Bone went around the table, checked to make sure that the door was still locked then sat down across from the two men. ‘Which one of you is Uncle Charles?’
‘I’m Uncle Charles,’ said the grey-haired man. The flat, slightly nasal accent was clearly New York. ‘I always take notes,’ he said firmly.
‘No,’ said Bone.
‘Do as he says, Allen,’ the other man suggested. The voice was quiet and rang with a rich Texas twang, which, to Bone’s ear, was almost a contradiction.
‘Who are you?’ Bone asked.
The big man smiled and took a tug on his cigar. ‘Just a country boy,’ he said softly, ‘doing my part.’ Keeping his eyes on Bone he put out his right hand and pushed the offending notebook and pen towards his companion. Uncle Charles took the broad hint and put the notebook away. ‘I understand y’all didn’t like the meeting place we arranged. That so?’
‘It is,’ Bone said. The man across from him was going to some lengths to make himself out to be some kind of country bumpkin but his eyes were hard, cold and calculating.
‘Didn’t care much for the people we were bringing either, now, did you?’
‘As I said before, they’re politicians.’
‘Young Lyndon’s more than a politician, sir, believe me. Bound for glory, that boy is. No telling how far he’ll go.’ The Texan smiled even more broadly. ‘Depending on the circumstances.’
‘How much does he know?’ Bone asked, glancing at the man from New York.
‘Nothing,’ Uncle Charles responded. He gestured towards the Texan. ‘Only that my friend here requested he be at a meeting of some importance.’
‘And the others?’
‘The same,’ said the Texan. ‘Lyndon knows some people here in Louisiana. Next-door neighbours, so to speak. He talked to Gerry Smith. It was Smith who laid on the security measures you objected to. Mr Carolla and his people, that is.’ The Texan lifted his big shoulders and dropped them, smiling. ‘Sorry if we gave you offence but I have to say, sir, that we don’t do this every day.’ He paused. ‘We have our professional talents, but when it comes to… this sort of thing, we’re amateurs.’
‘I understand,’ Bone said.
‘Perhaps we should get down to business,’ said the man from New York. ‘We don’t have a great deal of time.’
‘Suits me,’ said the Texan. Bone said nothing. There was a long, almost physically unpleasant pause. Outside on the street Bone could hear a barker for the Pelican Lottery hawking tickets:
‘Four, ’leven and forty-four,
Four ’leven and forty-four,
Bring that number ’fore I lose my head
’Cause my woman’s in that yeller-man’s bed’
Finally the man from New York spoke up. ‘My friend here and I represent interests who find the thought of America involving itself in another world war abhorrent. Clearly, however, Mr Roosevelt intends to take us into just such a conflict.’ He paused and cleared his throat. ‘He must be stopped. At all costs, he must be stopped.’
Bone remained silent. The big man smoked his cigar and waited for his friend to continue. Eventually he did so.
‘A number of us feel that through political scheming, blandishments of one kind and another and outright lies, the president has positioned himself in the American public eye as some sort of saviour. He has the entire nation hoodwinked.’
‘And you intend to save the nation from Mr Roosevelt?’ said Bone, unable to resist. He’d been at a dozen meetings like this one, had heard variations on this same theme as many times. Cain had probably used the same justifications to himself before slaying Abel.
The Texan took the cigar out of his mouth and leaned forward across the desk, his large, slightly goggled eyes staring at Bone. ‘No, sir,’ he said, his voice still soft. ‘We intend to save ourselves and the people we represent from Mr Roosevelt. Powerful people, sir, people who don’t much care for what the president has done to business in this country and who care even less for what he intends to do if, God help us, he is elected to another term.’
‘And these are the people who wish to hire my services?’
‘Indeed,’ said the Texan. He clamped his teeth down on his cigar and leaned back in his chair.
‘We were going to discuss terms,’ said the man from New York.
‘Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars,’ said Bone, his voice flat and unemotional. ‘Half deposited into an account I keep in Bermuda within the next seven days. The rest on the satisfactory completion of the task.’
‘Good Lord!’ said the man from New York. ‘That is a great deal of money, sir.’
‘I agree,’ said Bone. ‘But you and your friends are getting a great deal in exchange.’
‘He’s quite right,’ the Texan said. ‘The visit of Their Royal Majesties is most definitely part of Roosevelt’s third-term campaign strategy. It is meant to be a triumph. This will turn it into tragedy.’ He paused. ‘There will be no third term.’
‘Do you think you can actually accomplish the task?’ asked the man from New York.
‘Certainly.’ Bone nodded. ‘I wouldn’t be having this meeting if I believed otherwise.’
‘How will you do it?’ the Texan asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Bone. ‘It’s not important that you know.’
‘When?’
‘I’m not sure of that either.’
‘It must take place on American soil,’ insisted the man from New York. ‘That is of primary importance. It cannot take place during the Canadian portion of their visit.’
‘I understand,’ Bone said.
‘Can we be of assistance in any way?’ asked the Texan. ‘The people we represent have resources you might find useful.’
‘I prefer to work entirely alone,’ said Bone. ‘In my experience most plots such as this die stillborn due to lack of security.’ He paused. ‘The fewer people who know of my existence the better.’ Bone stared across the table at the two men. ‘I’m quite certain that by now too many people already know too much but that can’t be helped.’
‘Then we’re agreed?’ said the Texan. ‘We can proceed?’
The man from New York hesitated, his lips parting as though he was about to speak, but the Texan brought up a large hand and placed it on his companion’s shoulder. The man from New York nodded. ‘We’re agreed.’
‘How will we contact you?’ the Texan asked.
‘You won’t,’ Bone answered. ‘I’ll contact you, if necessary.’ He stood up. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me.’
‘A name?’ the Texan asked. ‘We’ll need one.’ The man sounded almost eager, as though he didn’t want the meeting to end, as though he relished it. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll be using the one you gave us any longer.’
‘Green,’ Bone said. ‘Green is as good as any other.’
He glanced at the man from New York. ‘I’ll call you with the necessary bank information.’ Bone bowed his head slightly. ‘If you will, gentlemen, wait five minutes or so before you leave.’ He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘You could even have some lunch downstairs. The oysters are delicious.’ With that he went around the desk and went through the French doors and out onto the fire escape. Then he was gone.
The two men sat for a moment and then the Texan stood and climbed up onto the dormer. He glanced out through the opening. ‘He’s gone.’
‘He may be good at what he does,’ said the man from New York, ‘but he’s not much of a businessman.’
‘Why do you say that?’
The grey-haired man got up from his seat and joined his friend at the window. ‘What if he succeeds and we decide not to pay him the rest of the money?’
‘We won’t do that, Allen,’ the Texan answered, shaking his head. His cigar had gone out and he relit it carefully with a small gold lighter that seemed oddly dainty for a man of his bulk. He blew a plume of heavy smoke back into the room.
‘Why won’t we?’
‘Because,’ said the Texan, puffing hard on the cigar, ‘if we were that foolish, the pale-faced son of a bitch would find out who we were and track us down and kill us, one by one by one.’
The man from New York reached into his pocket and took out a pipe. He lit it with the Texan’s lighter then sent up his own blue cloud of smoke. ‘Well at least he doesn’t know about the other thing.’ The pipe made a small gurgling noise and the man took it out of his mouth and peered into the bowl.
‘Yes,’ said the Texan. ‘Our ace in the hole.’ He glanced out the window again, a faint shadow of worry flashing across his features. ‘Let’s just pray that your friend Mr Green never finds out about that.’