HOOKE WOKE UP THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON FEELING LIKE HE’D come out the other end of the Rumble in the Jungle. Maybe this thought was prompted by the sight of his right hand wrapped up like a fighter’s mitt, not to mention the pounding in his skull, which felt like Ali was floating like a butterfly in there, throwing lightning jabs at his eye sockets.
Jesus God, Hooke wanted to say, but he was thwarted in his desire to break the second commandment by a mouth drier than the sand in a fire bucket, and so could barely manage to separate his lips.
What issued forth from those lips was not language so much as an animal growl, but it was enough to attract the attention of a nurse on the other side of the screen which separated him from the rest of the small ward.
The nurse was Elodie Moreau, who looked like she could sleep for a hundred years, given the opportunity.
Girl looks dog-rough, thought Hooke. Maybe I done picked the wrong woman to yearn for.
But then Elodie smiled at him and Hooke’s doubts were dispelled.
“Constable Hooke,” she said. “You all came back to us, thank the Lord.”
Hooke wasn’t dumb enough to read anything into the Lord being thanked; this was a platitude, pure and simple. But a lot of relationships were sparked off by trauma. Maybe this could be one of those.
Elodie trickled some water down his parched gullet, and when Hooke felt he’d been sufficiently libated, he asked, “How long I been out?”
“All night,” she said, “and most of the morning. Snoring like a hog, too. I never heard such a racket.”
She’s testing my limits, thought Hooke. People get emboldened, kick a guy when he’s down.
“Careful there, Miss Nurse,” he said softly, but with an edge to it. “Even lawmen got feelings.”
Elodie stepped back. “Sorry, Constable. Guess my bedside manner could use a little work.”
“That depends on the bed,” said Hooke, and left it at that. Maybe next week, if this Carnahan storm passed by, he could drive around to Elodie’s shack for a proper thank-you.
“Any calls come in for me?” he asked now.
“Nothing came in, but I called Lori,” said Elodie.
Hooke grunted. Lori was the secretary he shared with Mayor Shine. Petit Bateau couldn’t fund an extra secretary, so the truth was that Hooke did most of his own dispatching and paperwork, but Lori manned the phone most weekday mornings.
“She miss me?” asked Hooke.
“Lori was wondering as to your whereabouts, so I told her you’d been bitten and was resting up here. Nothing much going on in the office. Lori says there was some ruckus downriver last night—some swamp rats dynamite-fishing, probably.”
Dynamite-fishing, thought Hooke. Shit, these people are making up their own narratives.
“I told Lori that you’d be out for another few days at least. Maybe a week.”
“A week? I don’t have no week to be laid up here.”
This was true. Hooke sensed that time was a commodity he didn’t have an abundance of in this case.
How he saw it was like this: Ivory dispatches him into the bayou to deal out some swamp justice to Willard Carnahan. This makes sense for Ivory as Hooke is his man on the water. But then the New Orleans boss decides to copper-fasten his hold on Regence by sending a spy to video Hooke doing the job Ivory dispatched him to do.
A tangled goddamn web, thought Hooke.
So now the whole situation had clusterfucked itself: Ivory’s spy was dead or messed up, and the boss knew that Hooke was both onto him and after him.
If it was Ivory, thought Hooke. ’Cause if it wasn’t him, I ain’t got a clue who to hunt.
He should have a clue, he knew that, but the venom hangover was clouding his brain. The situation was critical, but Hooke knew he’d better get it smoothed over. Ivory coming after him was interfering with his own plan to go after Ivory, which had always been his endgame.
“You got to lay up, Constable,” said Elodie, trying to sound firm. “We just took you off dialysis. The doctor wants to keep you in for observation in case the symptoms reoccur.”
Hooke sat up, with some considerable effort. “Just help me out of bed, Elodie. I got a call to make.”
“I ain’t even told you about the physical therapy,” objected Elodie. “You wanna lose the use of that entire arm? Because that’s what you’re fixing to do by making a call.”
“Put a pamphlet under my pillow,” said Hooke. “I can look after myself.”
Elodie made another attempt to dissuade Hooke. “You shouldn’t even be walking, Constable,” she said. “Not in your condition.”
Hooke swung his legs out of bed. “Honey, I led a patrol across Ramadi with a concussion, so I think I can make my way across the floor.”
Elodie flinched some at the endearment but swallowed it down. “You could go blind!”
“Well, in that case,” said Hooke, “I’ll most certainly go back to bed.”
The girl was certainly doing her best to save his life, he had to give her that. Even though she wasn’t exactly sweet on him, not as yet.
I’ll redouble my efforts. Maybe put her kid in hospital for a few weeks to give me a clear run at her. But right now, there is containment to be attempted with the king of New Orleans.
Thinking of Ivory soured Hooke’s mood a few notches, and he forgot his fondness for Elodie Moreau. “Lead me to my phone, woman,” he snapped, pulling a drip feed out of his arm. “I got to be about my business.”
Elodie had some sass in her and snapped right back, “Your phone is in the locker, Constable. A man who led a patrol across Ramadi oughta be able to navigate a few feet of linoleum.”
Hooke considered punching the nurse with his good hand, then reconsidered. This was a clinic, not a dark alley, and punching a nurse never looked good in print. Plus it might be that he would swing wild and land on his ass. So he smiled as sweetly as was possible for a man like him and said, “My apologies, Miz Moreau. I am a little testy today. Must be the poison in my system.”
“No need to apologize, Constable Hooke,” said Elodie, her flash of anger disappearing as quickly as it had arrived. “I’m a mite testy myself, so there’s a pair of us in it.”
Not yet, thought Hooke, but soon enough.
HOOKE STUMBLED INTO the dayroom with his phone, glowering at some good old boy with a gashed-up forehead until the man took his copy of Guns and Ammo and skedaddled.
Hooke sent a message to an old-fashioned pager number and ten minutes later got a call back from his handler. Regence would have preferred to have a sit-down with Ivory Conti himself in his retro Mafia hotel, but the boss ran his criminal enterprises the same way he’d run his financial-adviser office back in Wall Street, i.e., like a real business. If a street-level operative wanted a meeting with the top dog, it would take six months to find an opening in his calendar, and even then, it would probably end up being five minutes on FaceTime. So Hooke would have to content himself with a call.
That being said, being as Hooke was one of Ivory’s pet cops, he would at least merit a grade-A flunky, the Rolls-Royce of bodyguards: the twin.
The single twin.
Tragic story. See, there had been two twins until recently, which was the accepted norm by definition, until one became the first casualty of Ivory’s land grab, gunned down outside an inner-city community center by a teenage hit girl.
And then there was one: a big African Creole bruiser by the name of Rossano Roque. Rossano was way into his martial arts. He could chop down a tree with his hands, so they said. Picked up the name Grasshopper in fifth grade after that old show Kung Fu, then sawed it off to G-Hop when he grew up some. And G-Hop it was to this day. Only Ivory called the big man Rossano.
“What’s the big emergency, cop?” asked G-Hop. “I got business needs attending.”
This was reassuring. Rossano was his usual pissed-off self, so nothing out of the ordinary.
“Relax, Roque,” said Hooke, trying to sound all casual, like he wasn’t laid up with snake bite.
“You wanna tell me what we’re doing here, Regence? If the Feds are up on me, then this don’t look good for either of us.”
“Up on me,” thought Hooke, sneering. Someone’s been watching The Wire.
“If the Federales were up on you, I’d know, and shortly after, you’d know,” said Hooke. “You ain’t even on their list, small fish like you.”
G-Hop snuffled down the phone, and Hooke could imagine his face, looking all pissed off. It was typical of these slingers: They all wanted liberty and notoriety. Difficult to have it both ways.
“Good,” he said. “That’s the way I like it, Hooke. Anonymity, you understand?”
“Smart move, kid. Stay low-profile. Those old Mafia guys were assholes. All bling and celebrity trim, right? Showboating is why they got their collars felt. I like your way better: low-profile. Nothing special about Rossano Roque.”
Roque exhaled noisily. “You know, Hooke, I can’t figure the angles on you baiting me. You’re crooked, we own you. So why the back-and-forth today all of a sudden?”
Hooke decided to come clean on his condition. “Maybe it’s residual venom got me acting all crazy. Nurse said it might happen.”
“You got bit?” said Roque.
“Yeah, I got snake-bit. Stupid, right, a man of my experience? But it happens. I just wanted to assure you that in spite of my incapacitation, the job Mister Conti entrusted to me is done. Maybe you already know that?”
“I know now. You got me on the phone for that? You couldn’t have sent an emoji? Thumbs-up or some shit?”
“Sometimes communication breaks down,” said Hooke. “Then people forget their roles and chaos can’t be far behind. Am I right?” Hooke was listening close. Thing was, he was talking complete gibberish unless a person had the code, the code being that Ivory sent a watcher. And if that was the case, then no doubt his head of security had set it up.
But G-Hop sounded mystified. “What the hell, Hooke? I think that venom is all up in your system because you are talking total crap. The only one forgetting their role is you, frankly. I am the boss and you are my dog. A clever dog, granted. An America’s Got Talent level of dog, but a dog nonetheless. So, I got your message: The job is done. And Mister Conti is grateful, which will be reflected in your envelope. Can we leave it at that? Can we not elaborate around civilians where there could be lasers bouncing off the window? So long as Mister Conti is clear of this shit, he don’t wanna hear about it. Are you feeling me, Hooke?”
G-Hop was making a lot of sense. His boss, Ivory, knew more than most how evidence of any sort had a way of making it on to the Internet. Many of his banker friends from back on Wall Street had been sunk by cell phone video or recovered emails.
Maybe I was wrong, Hooke thought. Maybe Ivory ain’t my guy.
Then again, it was more likely that Roque would make day-to-day decisions like getting some dirt on Hooke to keep him loyal.
“So you didn’t send no kid to video me doing the deed?” he asked.
“No, I goddamned didn’t,” shouted Roque. Then he realized the implication of this question. “Are you telling me that a kid shot video?”
“Could be,” admitted Hooke. “There was a camera involved. I’m pretty sure it’s blown to pieces, but they make these things rugged nowadays.”
“Did you happen to mention Ivory’s name while you were conducting business?”
“Now that is a pertinent question,” said Hooke. “I might have relayed a message from Mister Conti—‘This is from Ivory’ kind of thing.”
“Well, that’s just fucking great,” said G-Hop. “Just fucking dandy. I should just do you, Hooke. Seriously.”
Hooke actually laughed at this death threat. “You best not talk trash, son, or you’ll go the way of your brother, know what I mean?”
“Goddamn,” swore G-Hop. “Look at this for a clusterfuck. I put you on this, Hooke, because you assured me you were talented and discreet. ‘Talented and discreet,’ your very words.”
“I am discreet,” argued Hooke, feeling a tightness in his chest. “I was discreet—but so was the asshole in the bushes.”
“And you thought I sent a spotter?” said Rossano Roque. “To keep you on a leash.”
“Crossed my mind.”
G-Hop took a moment to assess before speaking. “Okay. Here’s my take on it, cop. Maybe I did send the spotter, in which case Ivory owns you. But then he already owns you, and a lot more like you. But I’m saying that I didn’t send a spotter, in which case you got a problem running around Honey Island Swamp. If I was you, I’d be assuming that I didn’t send that spotter and start looking for him on your end, ’cause even if I did send him, there ain’t dick you can do about it anyways.”
It made sense, Hooke had to admit, if only to himself. If Ivory had the video, then it was now locked in the famous super-safe in his office, which Hooke was not getting into without a specialist. If Ivory didn’t have the video, then someone in Regence’s own parish did, and he’d better go and sort that shit out before the clip made it back to Ivory.
“The kid who filmed you,” said G-Hop. “If not sent by Ivory, then local, yeah?”
“Correct,” said Hooke.
More sense from Roque. “Is there a local kid who might like you gone? Some kid who knows the bayou?”
“Shit, Colonel, there’s maybe two dozen. But I know who’s top of the list.”
Squib Moreau, thought Hooke, and immediately felt the rightness of it. That little prick hates me on account of my future relationship with his momma. If it was him, then it’s only a matter of time before the video winds up being played for a jury of my peers, or even worse.
“And here, Your Honor, is where Constable Hooke guts the drug smuggler with his knife. We can see the intestines clearly.”
And the judge would say, “Turn that shit off. I just ate a burrito.”
G-Hop was waiting for his take. “Well,” said the self-styled ninja, “you got any thoughts on the subject?”
Hooke took his time. “I tell you one thing, G-Hop,” he said finally, “I ain’t about to talk burritos with no judge.”
Which confused the hell out of Rossano Roque.
Just the way I like him, thought Hooke, and hung up without another word.
Squib Moreau, thought Hooke, his heart beating almost hard enough to crack ribs.
Squib fucking Moreau, thought Hooke, and the sight faded from his eyes.