TWENTY ONE

The road on which he departed the farmers’ cooperative created an illusion of crossing flat land, yet frequent dips into river bottoms and nasty twists through various geographic contours made the trip a challenge. That he was speeding didn’t help. He was negotiating a tricky section when his cell phone played a jingle in his overcoat. Émile slowed down, initially to check the caller ID, then to pull off to the side. By a frozen stream in a winding gulley, he stopped.

“Detective Dupree,” he answered, “how’s it going, sir?”

“I’m seriously pissed off with the universe myself,” the New Orleans cop stated. “You?”

The man had a knack for making him laugh. “I’m in a better mood than you are, Dupree. Who knows why? Mostly I’m spinning my wheels. What’s up down there?”

Listening to his response, Cinq-Mars took time to appreciate his surroundings. Without the call, he might never have noticed this place. A quiet stream meandered through the gulley in the summer, water slipping under the road through twin culverts, the shaded indentation out of sight of farmland on the next level up. In winter the stream was iced over, the trees bare, and at the base of the embankment he found himself situated in his own little world. Cinq-Mars was grateful that the operator of a snowplow had taken the trouble to clear a small, safe parking spot. Skeptical of human impulses, he figured the plow’s driver had wanted a quiet place out of sight where he could enjoy a snack and a smoke without seeing his paycheck docked.

I might come here again, Cinq-Mars considered, if only to be undisturbed.

Dupree was going on about a number of inconsequential inconveniences before he said, “Our man Everardo Flores. May I remind y’all that he was your idea.”

“My wife’s actually. What’s he been up to?”

“Bugger goes around telling people he’s a cop! I specifically told him, I warned him, ‘Don’t tell people you’re a cop.’ Bugger won’t listen.”

“How do you know?”

“What?”

“Did you debrief him already?”

“Me? What? I haven’t talked to the prick. Y’all think I’d let him run around out there on his own? I got an undercover dolled up as a bag lady tracing his steps, to keep tabs on what damage he does.”

“I hope she’s a woman, your undercover. What damage is he doing?” A small flock of cedar waxwings descended onto a nearby limb. Cinq-Mars leaned over the steering wheel to observe them. Knowing that it wasn’t cold out, he opened the front door with his opposite hand and held the phone in his left, and stepped out into the brisk, clear air. The birds flew up, but settled back down again.

“I won’t call it havoc,” Dupree related. “Not yet. But he’s got no business telling people he’s a cop. That’s way against orders.”

“I hear you, Dupree. But he’s a volunteer, right? He’s not really under orders. If he’s not doing any damage maybe he’s finding something out.”

“Pisses me off, my man.”

Cinq-Mars laughed a little. “I’d have his hide if he was working under me. Look, I appreciate your procedure, Dupree, keeping an eye on him and all that. How did you swing it?”

“Officially? My undercover’s people assigned to drug-check the neighborhood. Won’t be too hard to clock visible hours, bust a few. This way, neither my boss nor the neighborhood knows what’s up. At least, they didn’t until that bonehead Flores told folks he’s a cop. Undermines the whole point of using him, you know?”

“I appreciate what you’re doing.”

“Let’s see what he comes up with before anybody appreciates a damn thing. Sorry to take up your time, Émile. Needed to vent.”

“Gotcha. You take good care, Dupree.”

He was rushing the call as another one was coming in. His quiet roadside spot was an information highway. “Agent Sivak, how are you?”

“Fine, Émile! How are things up there at the North Pole?”

“So-so. Santa’s grumpy. The elves are dipsomaniacs. Everyone’s depressed, post-Christmas. Up here we believe in Santa Claus, but we have serious doubts about spring. And you, staying clear of crocodiles?”

“Only alligators in our swamps, Émile.”

“I have a hard time keeping that straight.”

“Think of Crocodile Dundee. What country?”

Cinq-Mars hesitated. He’d seen that movie. “Australia.”

“There you go.”

“Okay. Got it. So no alligators nibbling at your toes?”

“Oh, I wish,” she said, which he didn’t get for a moment. “So about your Mr. Flores.”

A popular subject today, apparently. “What of him?”

“He never went home.”

“What?”

“On the night of your wife’s abduction—you asked me to check—he never made it home.”

“No, but he was heading home, right?”

“Wrong. We ran down the hotel’s call to him, per your request. That wasn’t easy, by the way. We have procedures in the FBI to track the GPS on phone calls and I wasn’t following them. What I’m saying is, you owe me, because this can reach back and bite me. But anyway, he never made it home, Émile. He never left a four- block radius of the Hilton.”

“No shit. Excuse my, well, my English.”

“That’s what I said when I found out. No shit. What do you make of them apples?”

“I was thinking to myself this morning, Agent Sivak—”

“Vira is fine with me. We covered this, remember?”

“Sorry. Vira. Nothing in this matter is anything other than strange. Don’t you find that?”

“I’m off to Alabama,” she interjected out of the blue. “Shortly.”

Something in her tone felt consequential. “Great. I appreciate it.”

“No problem. It’s not on my own time. I had a talk with Special Agent Dreher. He thinks I should go but I have to do it on the sly, an officially unofficial type thing. Still. Maybe we can figure something out.”

“It’s a long shot. I know that. But thanks. So what do you make of this Flores thing? I’m still trying to process the news.”

“I know, hey? Isn’t that something? He’s lying through his teeth. But who knows about what or why. Soon as I have a minute, I’ll challenge him on that. I’ll also track down the location where he was really at, see what that gives us.”

Cinq-Mars thought about it and tromped the snow underfoot. “If you don’t mind, Vira, can we hold the first part of that in our hip pocket? I’ll ask him myself when the time seems opportune, or you can, but I’d like to feel him out more before we point out to him that he’s a lying skunk.”

“Fair enough. But only until I get back. After that, I treat him as a person-of-interest in your wife’s kidnapping. You know how it goes, Émile. I’m obliged to at least make it look like I’m doing something. I’m even obliged to do something.”

“I understand, Vira. Again, I appreciate the cooperation. It’s splendid.”

“So, Émile,” Sivak began, then paused.

“Yeah?” She had given him vital information about Everardo Flores, but her tone suggested that what she said next constituted the real point of her call.

“Like I said, I was talking to Agent Rand Dreher.”

“Right.”

“He was thinking out loud, you know?’

“Not about me,” Cinq-Mars said.

“Yeah, actually, about you. He’s wondering if he can come out from under his desk now, give you a call.”

“I’ve been trying to get that message to him.”

“He knows. But he worries he’s being baited.”

“He should call me, Vira.”

“I’ll let him know. Expect a call. By the way, he’s in Montreal.”

“What?”

“Up there to see you, I think. Once he summons the courage.”

“Thanks for the heads up. And thanks for the word on Flores. That’s nothing if not interesting.”

“Something I thought you should know.”

Before moving on, Émile stood in the winter grove, among the birds and rocks, the trees and the stream. This was what retirement was supposed to have looked like, no? Spending time in beautiful quiet places. He had never developed a clear plan for his senior years, so perhaps that was the problem. Here he was instead, now as ever, crime-fighting.

 

 

Everardo Flores worked diligently down one side of his designated street and back up the other, an investigation that took less time than anticipated as most people had nothing to say. No one remembered the Katrina murders in any worthwhile detail. Back then, they were all too busy trying to stay alive themselves, a response he had no reason not to accept at face value. A few folks, including the first woman he talked to, remembered the dead couple, although the principal component of everyone’s collective memory was that they kept to themselves and said little. They rarely had visitors. No family came around that anyone could recall. One woman thought she heard that they were not from New Orleans originally, nor even Louisiana, that they came from somewhere “north of the Mississippi delta,” which in Flores’s view narrowed it down to roughly forty- nine states and the District of Columbia.

Having tramped up and down two blocks, he thought he might call Dupree for a lift back when he noticed that houses on the side of the street where the murder victims once lived backed onto those the next street over. The space between them was composed of yards that bordered one another, separated by fences. The victims might as easily have shared conversation out back as off their front stoop. So he started knocking on doors the next street over.

In the house directly behind the victims’ home, he met a man who remembered the dead couple well. He professed to knowing them, whereas everyone else, if they remembered them at all, did so in passing, as someone might recall a shade tree that once stood on a corner lot. The man took him out to the backyard, cracked open a beer for Everardo Flores, and told him all that popped to mind.

Flores scribbled down that the dead neighbor, the husband, claimed to be a farmer from Nebraska. “He had the calluses on his hands to show for it, too.” But he chose to quit that hardscrabble life. “Don’t know if he was blowin’ smoke up the chimney stack,” the neighbor mused. “‘It’s not like I owned the Ponderosa,’ is what he said to me one time,” and the neighbor mimicked the dead man’s voice. “‘Black dirt farmers, poor like me, work a dry patch of dirt without no promise of rain. If folks paid hard cash for rocks ’n’ stones, I’d do plenty good for myself. Except I raised corn. Most years, it’s dry rock land, hot as cinders at the end of a bonfire.’

“Here’s where my confusion comes into it,” the dead man’s neighbor reported to Flores. “The man had some nostalgia in him for those harder times. He’d tell me how much trouble it been, how poor he been, how cruel his stone fields got to be to him some years not to mention untimely squirts of rain, too much or too little, but he missed those days, I could tell. He had the nostalgia in him for his scorched land.”

“I guess,” Flores opined, “that became more true when somebody stuck a knife into him down here.”

“Sliced across his neck, actually. So the paper said. All the misery in this town in those bad days, you’d think no man would heap no more upon a soul or cause a body to suffer no more. We think that way but he’s a dead man now because that’s not the truth. Always somebody has to go inflict more painfulness. They wanted his head cut off him, but I don’t know why.”

They seemed to be done, and Flores was finishing up the most welcomed of beers, when the wistful neighbor added, “Still now.”

“Hmm?”

“He had a house to live in, didn’t he? And yet he had no, what they call, ‘visible means of support.’ So what was his invisible means? He said the farm. That sale. So it must have been something, not nothing to support him. And then.”

The neighbor shook his head as he reflected upon the vagaries of life.

“And then?” Flores encouraged him.

“I solemnly swear that his was the misfortune to die a sorry death at exactly the time when good luck turned its head to shine its own clear eye on him.”

“What good luck? What eye? Not Katrina’s.”

The man looked at Flores as if he had a screw loose.

“No, okay, not Katrina’s,” Flores corrected himself. “But what good luck?”

“The insurance company’s. That eye. A few of us had the insurance. I did, that poor dead couple did, but I had to wait myself, and most of us around here had to wait months, some years, before any insurance company took any good notice of our plight. Oh, they knew we were here all right, waiting on them, but they said they needed the time and more time to get around to everybody standing with an empty hat in their hand stuck out. Myself, I think they were waiting for us to die off in that meantime it took to get around to see if any of us were staying alive. Gifford was one who died. That’s his name, I remember it now although I never said it often. Gifford, he had an adjustor on his doorstep before nobody could imagine such a thing.”

The hotel security man considered the news. Life seemed unfair so often. Especially, perhaps, down here in St. Bernard Parish. “Too bad he never lived to collect on that insurance.”

“Too bad. Me, I’m still waiting on mine, although they did give me some down on account.”

“Did they?”

“Generous fuckers, hey? But they were expecting me to die sooner, not later.”

Everardo Flores was led back through the musty house and was almost out the front door when a thought occurred. He was about to let it go, but then he supposed that if he was going to be telling people he was a cop he might as well behave like one. “Sir, this insurance claims adjustor who came around. The one on Gifford’s doorstep. What did he look like? Do you remember that?”

“White guy,” the neighbor declared. “That’s about all I recall now. Not nothing about him to distinguish himself. Just another white man looking skittish in a black man’s parish. He never knocked on my door, that much I can tell you for certain, without no word of a lie going on there.”

 

 

Cinq-Mars arrived home to learn that Special Agent Rand Dreher finally had telephoned. That the man declined to leave a message maddened him.

“So he just called, said hello, then goodbye?”

“More or less,” Sandra told him. “He asked how I was doing.”

“Sweet of him.”

“I’m sure it was nothing of the kind.” She was amused by her husband’s consternation. “He asked after me, said he was glad that things turned out okay in the end, in New Orleans. I asked him if he wanted to leave you a message—”

“But he just said no. I can’t believe it. Is he going to call me back even?”

“He didn’t say. He said—”

“No. What a twit. I’m going to call the bastard myself.”

“If you will let me finish, Émile.”

Émile looked across at her, realizing that he hadn’t allowed her to complete her thought. He stooped down slightly and ruffled the ears of his dog, Merlin. Trickles, the house cat, who lived a privileged existence when compared to the lives of the barn cats, chose that moment to head upstairs. Nap time, Émile supposed.

“He said it was fine, no message was necessary, but he expected to meet up with you soon. He wished me a nice day. I wished him one also.”

“Bastard.”

“Why is he a bastard?”

“Because he’s trying to get me to call him because he’s too damn proud—and/or chickenshit—to call me.” He stretched all the way up as he returned fully upright. The dog, satisfied for once, returned to its cushion and curled for a nap.

“But he did call you. And who’s too proud not to call whom?”

“He could’ve called me back on my cell. Why didn’t he? He has the number. What’s the good of these ridiculous things if people don’t use them?”

Sandra laughed out loud this time, briefly. “You could—I know, this is a radical concept for you—but you could call him back on his cell phone. I did tell him, you know, that you were probably on the road. Driving. He may have deduced that it was not the best time to call.”

“Bastard.” He was tempted to call him back, too. Give him a bigger piece of his mind about New Orleans. Not that any of it was the FBI’s fault, but could he not have forewarned him, at least, to leave his wife at home? Rather than make that call, fuming still, Cinq-Mars opted for a Highland Park.

 

 

Later, down in his basement, he confronted the easel set up with a large flip chart. He hadn’t managed to put much on it. Today he added notes from his conversation at the co-op that included the general descriptions of the men noticed on the farm when the Lumens moved there. Doing so energized him, and Cinq-Mars flipped pages to inscribe other descriptions, in large print, of everyone associated with the case. Easiest were the facial blotches of Jefferson Grant, less satisfying were his attempts to describe the pickpockets—Latino, small, slick, well-dressed—as were the height and weight of the men on the Lumens’ property: average. Every cop alive hated average. Still, he wrote down the dreaded word. And, although he had to check the spelling, he wrote the word that Michel Chaloult had summoned: rosacea.

Given he was using large print on the poster-sized pages, they were soon adding up. He considered that he was gathering more intelligence than he thought, and when committed to paper it looked more substantial than he previously imagined. In surveying his final effort, flipping the big sheets over, he also determined that he was arriving precisely nowhere in his investigation—he didn’t even want to call it an investigation, for fear of disrespecting both the word and the activity—that nothing here gave him a snowball’s chance in Hades of unravelling the case anytime soon. He was panning for gold and needed another ton of information to sift through to find the nugget worth saving. Mostly, he required suspects. Still, his handsome flowchart seemed to mark, at least, the suggestion of a start, and Cinq-Mars took solace in that.

Done, he could help Noel, their hired man, water the horses, groom one out of habit more than necessity now, then tuck into another afternoon Scotch with a renewed sense of accomplishment. He’d done something with his day. If anybody asked, he’d made headway.

 

 

Sergeant Pascal Dupree picked up Everardo Flores after his first foray into St. Bernard Parish and immediately excoriated him for daring to call himself a cop. They hadn’t yet driven a single block. The hotel security officer was dutifully contrite, sheepish, and profusely apologetic for the next four blocks before he spoke up in defiance of his inquisitor. “Hey!”

“Hey, what?” Dupree asked him. “Don’t hey me, you bastard.”

“You never heard me say I was a cop. Who told you?”

Dupree didn’t back down an inch. “I smell it on y’all. Stinking up my car! The one thing I asked y’all not to go do, y’all go do! First words out of your skinny mouth, y’all telling people you’re wearing cop feathers. What did I tell y’all?”

“How do you know that?” Flores bellowed back. “Who said they were my first words? Did you stick a wire on me?”

“Don’t be an idiot. I can’t stick a wire on y’all without y’all knowing. I’d like a device like that. Know what? Good idea. I’m going to invent that device and make my fortune. Anyway, what do y’all care how I know? Y’ already admitted it to me.”

“I only admitted it because you already knew! How did you know?”

“Everardo, get with the program, it’s an old cop trick. Pretend y’all know what is suspected, let the perp imagine that he’s toast, then let him own up to the crime.”

“I’m nobody’s perp!” Everardo protested, sounding petulant now, although no less chagrined. “I didn’t commit a crime!”

“Y’all were tricked. Get over it. Y’all were stupid enough to call yourself a cop. Written all over your face. That’s why I warned y’all. Lot of good it did me.”

“It helped me do the job, all right? If I say, ‘Hey, I’m in security down at the Hilton? What do you know about those murders happened over six years ago? Yeah, yeah, like I said, hotel security. So talk to me about the Katrina murders. Excuse me? What does the Hilton care? That’s a good question, ma’am. Y’see, the dead couple, they were customers of ours one time and we care about our customers, ma’am. Cradle to the grave, we look after you. Doesn’t matter if you never come back to see us. Once a Hilton customer, you’re under our protection for your whole lifetime. Why? Because we consider you family. Now, about those murders.’ Hey, Dupree, you ever stayed at a Hilton?”

“Up yours, Flores.”

“’Cause if you ever stayed at a Hilton, then me and you, we’re like brothers.”

“Okay, so you’re full of shit. What else is new?”

“I’m full of shit? How did you know I told people I was a cop?”

“I had y’all followed.”

“What?”

“You think I’d let y’all go out on your own, first time? Listen, I probably saved your life today. Nobody’s fond of cops in that neighborhood.”

“Now I know why.”

A stony silence ensued. They were merging with rush-hour downtown traffic when Dupree recalled the point of the exercise. “What did you find out—nothing?”

“Like I’d tell you.”

“Y’all never learned diddly-squat.”

“I learned plenty.”

“Then tell me.”

“Suck my dick willingly, Dupree.”

“Will you get off the ramp?” A car was slow to get going.

“What?”

“I’m not talking to you. Come on, Flores, what did you find out?”

“Plenty! Like I said.”

“Nothing, I bet.”

“Think so? Tell Cinq-Mars to call me. I’ll tell him a thing or two.”

Dupree had to stop on a red. “This is how things work here. I debrief you.”

“Does Cinq-Mars know?”

“Know what?”

“That you were following me in my footsteps.”

“Not me personally. I don’t think that much of ya’ll to follow you around. But yeah, actually, he knows.”

“Fuckers. The both of you then.”

“Flores, come on. It’s your first time making the rounds. We have to protect our asses, putting a citizen in harm’s way like that. Don’t take it so personal. We got procedures, man. We got protocol!”

The comment helped him to cool a tad. “I found out they weren’t from here.”

“We knew that,” Dupree commented.

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

“Sorry. We heard they were from St. Louis. Go on.”

“Not St. Lou. Not even Missouri, if you want to know the facts of life. I got close to the only man who got close to the dead couple.”

“Y’all didn’t.” In slow traffic, Dupree almost missed braking for the car in front of him. They lurched forward again.

“Don’t kill us, Dupree.”

“At this speed? A bump on the nose. Where they from?”

“Nebraska. They were poor black farmers. They quit the farm.”

“Yeah?” Dupree asked him. He grabbed a chance to switch lanes and line up for a left turn and took it.

“Yeah,” Flores said. They awaited a flashing green.

“That’s good Flores, that’s good.”

“I can take care of myself, Dupree.”

“Flores, everybody says that until they wind up dead. Then they don’t say a damn thing anymore. Don’t like what I did? Fine. But I don’t like it that y’all went around—”

“Saying I was a cop. Okay, I got that yesterday already.”

“So we’re even, more or less. All right?”

“Fine. But I got more.”

“What else?”

“Tell Cinq-Mars to call me.”

“Flores—”

“I don’t consider us exactly even. We need an even distribution of the overall punishment here. Tell Cinq-Mars to call me. That’s it. That’s all.”

Dupree made the turn and they were in freer traffic now not far from the Hilton. “Cinq-Mars knows protocol, Everardo. I’ll tell him, but he might not call you.”

“Then you better convince him, Dupree. Because he will want to know what I now know. And you don’t get to find that out unless he’s willing to tell you after I tell him. That’s what you get for protecting me, as you call it. That’s the price you got to pay.”

“Fucking civilians,” Dupree muttered under his breath.

“Yeah, well, that’s what you do regularly, isn’t it? That’s if you don’t just shoot us first for walking on a bridge.”

They stopped at the Hilton, where Flores had left his car.

“Will y’all go back there again?” the detective inquired.

“Let Cinq-Mars decide. After I tell him what I found out, he might not see the purpose. Probably he’ll ask me to do something bigger than this. Bump me up the ladder. Put me on a payroll. Don’t bet against it, Dupree. You’ll see.”

Half the time Dupree thought the man was an ass, half the time a decent guy. Overall, he figured that that was a better evaluation than he gave most people.

“I just might help y’all get into the academy, Flores, if that’s really what you’re after,” he said.

Although he remained suspicious, the small man lit up. “Really? They like my credentials they say, but they keep pointing out that I’m on the old side. I guess they’ll keep saying it until it’s true.”

“They’ll keep saying it until you cross a man’s palm.”

“What?”

“Grow up. Anyway, being slightly too old can be overcome with the right reference and without no heavy envelope.”

“I was hoping so. To get this reference, I got to tell you what I know?”

Parked, Dupree thought about it, but only for a second. “That would be like bribery. I don’t want to start y’all on the wrong foot. Cinq-Mars calls you a volunteer. Says I can’t order you around. Y’all want to talk to Cinq-Mars? I’ll see what I can do. But if I can get you on the force, then from that point forward I’ll be free to ream your butt. I’ll enjoy that, too. Won’t be a thing y’all can do about it then. I might get you on the force purely for the pleasure of my own amusement.”

Flores liked all that. He opened his door and had a foot on the pavement when he changed his mind about a few things.

“Look, I’ll tell you what I found out, if you want,” he said.

“Shove it back up you know where and keep it warm. I’ll call Cinq-Mars.”

“Thanks, Dupree.”

“Fuck y’all.” The detective seasoned his pronouncement with a convivial tone.

Flores, happy now, climbed out of the car.

 

 

The weather proved mild, but from inside the house the look of the setting sun in the western sky, the light, the particular angle, evoked the season at its nadir, the promise of snow and cold yet to come. The thing that Cinq-Mars enjoyed least about winter was the scarcity of sunlight. So many long hours of darkness. Now that he was retired he was noticing light more, or its absence, perhaps because he rarely visited the bright lights of the city. He was thinking that he should suggest to Sandra that, since New Orleans had been a vacation bust, they take a few days and nights in Montreal, eat and sleep in an atmosphere of luxury. If he got to talk to a few cops during the day, well, what could be the harm in that? He was wondering how best to work up to the suggestion. Be blunt, straightforward? Or set up a romantic interlude to preface the notion? That gentle meditation was interrupted by a ringing telephone.

Sandra raised an eyebrow. The dog cocked an ear. Cinq-Mars glanced over at each of them, then chose to be the one to answer.

“Cinq-Mars.”

Sandra rolled her eyes. She didn’t understand why he couldn’t just say hello.

“Émile!” He recognized that voice.

“Agent Dreher,” he answered dryly, testily. “How are you?”

“The barbarians are at the gate, Émile.”

“Meaning what exactly?”

“Maybe not in droves. There’s only me. I’m down the road from your house, ETA in about, oh, less than three minutes—if you let me in the door, that is.”

Cinq-Mars hesitated. “How did you know I was here? I thought Sandra told you I was—”

“Out on the road. Heading home. I’m taking a chance and it’s worked out. So far, anyway. May I presume to drive up to your house? Will you admit me?”

“See you soon,” Cinq-Mars confirmed and hung up. He told Sandra, “We have an imminent guest.”

“I’ll put the coffee on,” she said. Then hesitated. “Will he want dinner?”

“I’m not inviting the FBI to dinner. Not after New Orleans.”

She compromised, of course, quickly preparing a veritable feast of hors d’oeuvres by the time the man from the FBI knocked on their front door. The agent had been optimistic with respect to his arrival time, as it took him a full twelve minutes. Time enough for Cinq-Mars to finish his Highland Park and put away the bottle. His hospitality in this instance labored under exacting limits, even if Sandra’s did not.

Her presence, and her preparations, gave Dreher an opportunity to insinuate himself within the household for a considerable time, at least another dozen minutes, before having to share a direct word with Émile. When they did sit down alone, the foodstuffs and coffee a proper buffer between them, Special Agent Rand Dreher came across as suitably contrite.

“The case was supposed to be as cold as ice. As frigid as a whore’s—I’ll spare you. Why would I ever assume otherwise, Émile? I had no idea that trouble would befall you in New Orleans. Except that, you know, you might find some on your own volition. A bodyguard in the background seemed prudent. That’s it, that’s all. Really, I figured you’d get a taste for the problems in all this, pick up the flavor of the case. If I thought for a moment that you or Sandra were at serious risk, I’d never have asked you to go. Just because you have a great reputation as an investigator in your professional life doesn’t make you anything more than a private citizen now. I don’t know what happened down there, or why. No one does.”

All this pleading. What did he really want from him? Cinq-Mars was quite certain that the man felt no need for forgiveness. With men such as Rand Dreher—not unlike himself—every discussion in life was strategic.

“The kidnappers know who,” Cinq-Mars reminded him, “and what, and why. Apparently their only objective was to run me out of town. Why would that be?”

“I’m stumped, Émile. We all are. Everything that occurred was unforeseen.”

Cinq-Mars nibbled coffee cake. Laying out the spread, Sandra had warned him not to spoil his supper. Fat chance. Smiling then at his silent pun. “We can’t always anticipate trouble,” he admitted.

“That’s the truth. We cannot.”

“But in this instance, trouble seems to have been alerted. For God’s sake, the NOPD threw some kind of a hissy fit over my arrival. How’d they even know? I had felons waiting in the lobby of my hotel to pick my pocket. How the hell did they even know who I was? Let alone that I was there. That’s all on your doorstep, Rand.”

“Some of it might be. Good intentions, all around. You know how that goes. How the bad guys got wind, well, I myself, I look to the NOPD. If they knew you were coming, maybe one of them baked a cake. Between you and me, and I got nothing to go on, I’m not saying he’s in any way involved, but Pascal Dupree? I can throw him farther than I can trust him, and I imagine he’s a difficult man to shot put.”

Some thought … some fleeting memory or reminder … crossed Cinq-Mars’s face, and Dreher took an interest in whatever had just traipsed through his head.

“Émile? What did that thought provoke? I know you’re thinking something.”

He wasn’t sure at first. Sometimes one thought connects to another yet the recipient of both ideas remains in the dark. Cinq-Mars had to concede that a light had gone on, probably down in the murky depths of his subconscious, and he had to wait a moment for the impulse to float up and acquire some articulation.

“Dreher,” he began, taking it slowly, “there’s no love lost between the NOPD and the FBI. That doesn’t surprise me. Also, frankly, I find it quite boring. If you got along, oh, I don’t know, like mature colleagues should, then I might get excited. But no. It’s the same old pissing contest between rival cop gangs. But in this case there are specifics to the animosity. Specifics that reference this case. When Dupree investigated the murders of Gifford and Dorsey Lanos, after Katrina, why did the FBI charge along to investigate? How was it any of your business? Those were the first in your series, so at that point you possessed no prior interest. You had no series of murders. That’s question one. Other people might propose their own answer but I want to hear your take in particular. A horse’s mouth type thing. Answer that and I’ll give you another question that’s bugging me also.”

The man patted down one of his excessively bushy eyebrows before replying. He seemed unperturbed by the query. “Émile, that whole zone was a nightmare’s nightmare. Chaos times ten after Katrina. Do you know how many NOPD officers were dismissed for being derelict in their duty around that time?”

Cinq-Mars indicated that he had no clue.

“Guess. Take a wild stab.”

Since he was asking, he figured there had to be a lot. “I don’t know. Ten?”

“More.”

“Twenty?”

“Two hundred.”

“What? How many?”

“Sacked. Dismissed. Kicked out. For running away when the levies broke and for other offenses infinitely more vile than that. Two hundred. Every officer had to account for where he was and what he was doing during Katrina, and the runaways were chased off the force for good. So imagine being a cop in New Orleans at the time and you get called in on major crimes, murders included, about every half hour. Meanwhile, your department is in total chaos. Cops are missing. The few who are left are either disorganized or exhausted, usually both. Morale? Forget about it. Some are in shock. Some, as we would find out at Danziger Bridge, are prone to shoot the innocent. So you get called in to a bunch of cases and in the chaos you botch a few investigations. Who’re you going to call? Not ghost busters. Even though it might rot your socks, you drop a dime for the FBI. See if they’re willing to pitch in. Pull their weight for a change.”

“All right,” Cinq-Mars conceded. He was wishing now that he hadn’t put away his Scotch. “I’ve heard this argument before but I’m beginning to understand the context. I can accept that it’s valid. But here’s my next question.”

“Go on.” Dreher sipped coffee, then placed an elbow on the arm of his chair and covered his mouth slightly with his hand, waiting.

“Especially given that environment, why would the FBI out the NOPD?”

“What do you mean, out?”

“The NOPD investigates the murders, but misses the killer in the attic. Why alert the press to that, if not to just kick a department, and I think some good cops, at least one good cop, when they’re down? That strikes me as unprofessional.”

This time, Dreher was objecting, waving the sentiment off. “Yes, yes, Émile, that was the result. But nobody’s intention. The story went to the press because word on the street went around that cops had gone in and had a cup of tea with the killers. As if they were in cahoots. We had to get the word out that the killers hid in the attic. We let people know because it was the truth, but also—my God, those times were messy, Émile—people thought Dupree and other cops were in on it. Everybody found out that the killers were in the house. So what were the cops up to? Having a chat with them? Doing the tango? Cooking up a barbecue? We thought—it wasn’t me but that’s not the issue—we thought that if people knew what really happened, that the cops were merely outsmarted by a weird murderer who didn’t want to leave the scene of the crime—who could ever anticipate a thing like that?—and so the cops were outwitted by someone who very cleverly hid in the attic—that he was prepared to piss up there in his hiding spot and shit and eat and sleep, everything—then the people would get it. And get off the cops’ back. The whole thing got twisted thanks to the press, and the NOPD was made to look foolish. Dupree in particular, I suppose. That was an unfortunate development, an accident no one intended.”

A bureaucratic screwup, in other words. A public relations fiasco. He’d been through his share of those and been liable for missteps himself in a couple of instances. Shit happens sometimes.

“Do you see?” Dreher pressed him.

“I do,” Cinq-Mars admitted. He didn’t really expect Dreher to convince him of anything, and now felt oddly dissatisfied. Dreher was a smart guy, politically astute, obviously, when it came to meeting everyone’s concerns yet still pressing forward. A good guy to have in your corner, he believed. Still, he didn’t like coming up on the short end of any discussion. “What, ah, what are you doing here anyway?”

“Here in Quebec, you mean?”

Cinq-Mars nodded.

“The SQ called me in,” Dreher said, then quickly modified the statement. “They want to fill me in on recent developments. We might have done that over the phone, but frankly, I thought I should come up. To see you, as well as them. Two birds, as they say.”

“Have you had that talk yet?”

“I did. With Gabriel Borde. I believe that you’re in close contact with him. We discussed your high adventure in New Orleans, of course. It still bugs him that he was one of the people those bastards telephoned.”

“Makes you wonder,” Cinq-Mars interrupted, “how anybody knew that he and I stay in close contact.”

“Leaks,” Dreher summed up. “The world’s a sieve now, Émile. You can probably ask the question on the Internet, ‘Name an SQ officer in close contact with Émile Cinq-Mars.’ Lo and behold, you’ll get back an answer. The right one, too.”

“It’s a brave new world,” Cinq-Mars mused, as if speaking only to himself. He was wondering though, if Dreher didn’t eschew a telephone call with Borde in order to pick his brain in person about the secret caller from New Orleans. Yet he no sooner mulled it over than he realized that he was wrong to underestimate Captain Borde. Dreher was back in Canada because Borde insisted on him showing up for questioning. Dreher’s response was all smokescreen.

“The principal point of our discussion,” Dreher interjected, “has to do with the Quebec murders. Not much has been uncovered, I’m afraid. Noteworthy is this: the dead couple, they have no background. We don’t know where they came from. We don’t know who they are. As far as the official record goes, they don’t exist. They’ve paid no taxes. They’ve made virtually no money, except from renting out their farm. It’s like they’re aliens. They’re invisible to the world, and unlike you and Captain Borde, they’re invisible even to the World Wide Web. Except in death. All they’ve done in life is to die badly and leave behind inexplicable wills.”

“You’ve talked to the hospital in St. Louis?”

“They don’t understand it. But they’ll take the money.”

Dreher, in his way, was inviting Cinq-Mars to marvel with him over this development, but that was not going to happen. Instead, he was met by his host’s steady gaze and came under the influence of a silent accusation.

Finally, he asked, “What is it, Émile? What’s on your mind?”

“It’s time for the FBI to be straight with me. Bear in mind that I’ve seen my wife kidnapped for your cause, so I’m in no mood for any deflections, Agent Dreher.”

“I really wish that you’d call me Rand all the time, rather than occasionally.”

“Let’s hear what you have to say first.”

The special agent took a breath, issued a brief series of nods, pursed his lips, and permitted his expression to convey consent. “All right, Émile. It’s true. Our victims are people living under secret identities. Within the FBI, it’s a major calamity. It would seem that our security systems have been compromised somehow and those in witness protection are vulnerable. A few have been killed. We’ve got to find out what’s going on and stop it or who knows how many will die. The consequences to all this, Émile, to say the least, are dire.”

Cinq-Mars was first to break off their mutual stare. He stood and did a short pace in his living room. “So who were they really, the Lumens, Morris and Adele?”

Dreher separated his hands to indicate that he’d like to answer but could not.

“I presume this is really why Captain Borde had you up here. Not to share information but to have you on the carpet. To demand to know what you know. You’re right that we keep in touch. So you can answer the question, but if you choose not to, I’ll ask him to tell me whatever he got out of you.”

The special agent acknowledged the likelihood of that, yet he did not seem chagrined or in any way concerned. “You’re right, Émile. Of course. What I told him is the truth. I don’t know anything about the Lumens—about the New Orleans couple, I know more—but perhaps, now that that cat is out of the bag, I can come up with something regarding the Lumens. Let me explain. Witness protection is a closed track even inside the FBI. Random officers can’t just summon information. So I needed you, and you in particular, to get to the heart of the matter to force my hand, so that I could force the hand of my superiors. If other officers in other forces can find out that the victims are in our files, part of our calamity, as you’ve done, then perhaps myself and other agents can get a peek at the secret documents for ourselves. Without that push from the outside, you see, my hands are tied. I couldn’t tip you off at all. If I did, I’d lose my badge. So thank you, Émile, you have already helped immeasurably on this case. Now, perhaps, we can get somewhere.”

Still standing, pacing intermittently, Cinq-Mars considered this confession, of sorts, and pointed out to him, “You realize that I have succeeded at doing what I said I’d do, namely, demonstrate that the FBI was holding back secrets from me. This triggers a bonus for my services rendered. Just so we understand one another.”

Dreher may have been surprised by the mercenary emphasis, but offered no resistance. “Of course, Émile. I’ll see that that is executed. You have received your first payment then? Good. You see, I was rooting for you all along. In a way, you could say that I counted on you succeeding.”

Just then, a cell phone jangled and both men checked their own. Cinq-Mars was the recipient of the call. “Excuse me a moment, Rand. I need to take this.”

“Take your time,” Dreher said. “I’m comfortable enough right here.”

Cinq-Mars went through to the TV room to take the call from Sergeant Dupree. He was debriefed on what Everardo Flores had revealed, that the Lanos family in New Orleans hailed from Nebraska, and that he had uncovered more but wanted to say it directly to Cinq-Mars. “All part of his insecurity. The man has character flaws coming out the wazoo,” Dupree touted. “I don’t mind the guy though. He’s growing on me.”

Cinq-Mars told him what Agent Sivak found out, about Flores not going home the night of the kidnapping.

Dupree swore a blue streak. Then asked, “What do you want me to do?”

“Let me talk to him first, hear what he wants to say. Then we’ll decide on a course of action. Sivak wants a piece of him, but she’s lying low on that for now. I’m asking if you might do the same.”

“Yeah, for now. God, this guy, I can’t figure him.”

“You don’t have to, of course.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m asking you to lie low, just like I asked Agent Sivak to lie low, and I explained to you why, but I understand perfectly well that you don’t have to. I’m not in charge of anything here.”

“It’s okay, Émile. I’m willing.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“What?”

“Willing.”

“What? I’m not following y’all.”

Cinq-Mars let him mull it through silently.

“Oh.” Dupree said. “Okay.”

“I don’t want Flores to know what we know just yet but that doesn’t mean you have to agree with me.”

“In other words—”

“I think you got it.”

“I’ll talk to him before Sivak does.”

“I can’t stop you from doing what I don’t want you to do.”

“No, y’all can’t do that. Especially if ya’ll really want me to do it.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Neither did I. So, Émile, playing favorites? Or just both ends against the middle?”

“I’m on everybody’s side here.”

The other man laughed.

“No, I am. But if you talk to Flores, you’ll talk to Flores. I know what that’s about. You’ll get back to me on what he says, it’ll be on the side. No documentation, no rap sheet, no lawyer involvement. But if the FBI talks to Flores, they’ll take him in, maybe arrest him, he’ll lawyer up, we’ll never get our own chance to have a direct word and we’ll never hear back on what Flores says even if by some miracle he does talk. Not verbatim anyway. Only a filtered version and only if we’re lucky.”

“That’s nothing but true,” Dupree concurred.

“Listen,” Cinq-Mars told him, “I’ve got the FBI in the other room.”

“Not Sivak!” He sounded shocked.

“No, not Sivak. She’s off to Alabama, I hear. I got Randolph Dreher. Know him?”

“To know him is not to like him so much.”

“I hear the feeling’s more or less mutual.”

“No surprises there.”

“I’ll let you go, Dupree. Thanks for this report.”

“Back at you, Émile. Talk soon.”

 

 

Realizing that their guest was left temporarily abandoned, Sandra had joined Agent Dreher in the living room in Émile’s absence. Their chitchat never passed beyond life on the farm, the dog, and of course the weather. She was pleased that her husband, upon his return, seemed unperturbed that she was engaging the agent in small-talk, but then he shocked her. “Rand, my good man!” he exclaimed. “My God, where’re my manners? Please, say that you’ll stay for dinner. I insist!”

Sandra might have fallen off her ottoman if she wasn’t suddenly paralyzed in place.

“Émile,” Dreher responded, a polite falseness inherent to his protest. “I can’t possibly impose.” He looked to Sandra, for he required her endorsement of the suggestion before acceptance.

“Please,” Sandra stammered. “I also insist. You must stay.”

“Rand, stay. I’ll pour my best Scotch.”

And so, it was agreed.

Sandra shot her husband a look as he seated himself and put his feet up on the ottoman she now abandoned. Whatever that phone call did to him, he had oscillated through a radical change of mood. He learned a few things that day, confirming that both the Lumens and the Lanos families were farmers who didn’t farm. Finally, a connection. What it could mean, he did not know, but for the first time in this whole sordid business a line was drawn, two dots were successfully connected, and after repeated failures and much floundering in the dark he inhaled the intoxicating whiff of progress. Indeed, the victims—the Lumens in Quebec and the Lanos couple in New Orleans—adopted secret identities concocted by the FBI. No matter how anybody swung this cat—multiple ways existed to skin a feline—the FBI knew stuff. No way was he going to allow an agent to just walk out of his house without first delving into the depths of the man’s being.

So let the games begin.