It was a slow night at the Alibi, for which Wanda Dugas, working her usual two-to-ten shift, was grateful. She'd been watching the door since six for Gary Harmon.
Her boss, Laurent Prosperie, was deep into the bar's books, which he did by ritual every Monday night in a dark cubbyhole of an office secreted behind the main, circular bar counter. Bookkeeping was complicated, Wanda knew, because Laurent kept two sets of books: the real ones and the ones for the IRS. (Laurent didn't know that Wanda knew.)
The only other waitress, Kay Samanie, was sitting in a booth with her boyfriend, canoodling. Laurent allowed this because the boyfriend was a major in Go-Boy Geaux's office and Laurent had come to expect certain indulgences from the sheriff, including turning a blind eye to a nightly high-stakes and illegal poker game in the back room (in which deputies sometimes participated).
At exactly six-fifteen, Harmon walked in. He wore tortoiseshell glasses, which gave him a thoughtful, almost professorial look, and the standard gray pinstripe lawyer suit with white shirt and paisley tie. He appeared serious, almost diffident, from a distance, though he carried himself with an easy, ath letic grace. He also had a way of breaking into a sudden and disarming grin, which he flashed when he spied Wanda.
She motioned him to join her down at the far end of the bar. “Hey, Gary,” she said cheerily and loud enough so that the other waitress could see that this was just business as usual—Wanda greeting a regular.
“Hi, Wanda,” Gary replied, picking up her cue. “How you doin’?”
“Great, and you?”
Harmon smiled. “I'm better than I deserve to be.”
“Hah, I doubt that. Beer?”
“Oh, yeah.”
In a lower voice, Wanda said, “This one's on me. Whatcha drinkin’? The usual Abita? I know you're not one of those light-beer guys.”
Harmon smiled. “Right. I hate the stuff, actually.”
Wanda fetched the beer from a cooler, opened it, poured it into a mug, and set it before Harmon.
He took a sip and said, “So, how's school?”
“Great. Just gettin’ started again but I'm pretty excited. This semester and next and I'm done.”
“Hey, well, that's terrific. Then what?”
“I'll probably go to work for a while to pay back some student loans, then take my LSATs. I might just hold my nose and come here full-time—the money's good, even if the goods are odd. In a year or two, I could make a serious dent in my loans.”
Harmon laughed. “Ah, why don't you just take your LSATs now and plunge on in? You're sharp—you'll get into LSU, no problem. You could get summer law-clerking jobs. Some of them pay pretty damned good.”
Wanda smiled, recognizing a kernel of flattery in this. Then she looked around to make sure the bar was still empty, save for the canoodlers.
“So, Gary, can you keep a secret?”
“For you, you bet.”
Wanda then provided a colorful description of Louella LeBoeuf 's document trove and how she came to acquire it. Harmon, who thought this would be about some friend of Wanda's in low-grade trouble, was startled by her revelations.
“Holy shit,” said Harmon. “Are you serious?”
“Oh, yeah. And that's precisely what I said when I first read the stuff,” said Wanda. “You know, working in here you hear all kinds of strange things. But this goes way beyond anything I suspected.”
“So what does your friend want to do?” Gary asked.
“The right thing, whatever that is. These things need to get into the hands of people outside of this parish, maybe outside this state. We were just trying to come up with one honest person who might be in a position to help us do that.” She paused, adding, “That's you, by the way.”
Harmon leaned in closer. “I'm flattered, Wanda. I really am. And since you've taken me into your confidence, I'll take you into mine. But nobody, not even your friend, can hear what I'm about to say, okay?”
“Sure,” Wanda replied.
“You know Duck Landrieu, right?”
“The Dr. Duck?”
“Right. Well, it just so happens that he and I have, with the help of others, been looking into a part of this—the business involving Huff and Duplessis and the illegal chemical dumping. Let's just say the regulators and law doggies are on their trail and they could be in deep shit soon.”
Harmon took another sip of beer. He continued, “Of course, we recognize how slippery these bastards are, B.J. Duplessis especially. He's got a very crooked but very good and aggressive lawyer. But I think, if your friend's documents are what they are purported to be, you may have just delivered on a platter a very important piece of the puzzle. Excuse my French, but we may have 'em by the ass now.”
Wanda nodded again.
Harmon went on. “Now, as for the rest of this stuff, I'm not entirely sure how to proceed. But I have great confidence in Dr. Duck, who is our contact with the feds and knows all kinds of people in high places who aren't in the pocket of the Guv or any of the local yokels like Go-Boy. If you can get the stuff to me and you trust me to share it with Duck, I think we can figure out a way to make it, well, useful.”
Wanda nodded. “That's just what my friend was hoping for. I can bring copies to the bar tomorrow night. You can come in about the same time and I'll hand them to you—provided there are no spies about.”
“Sure,” said Harmon. “Buy a newspaper and stick them between the pages. I come in, have a beer, and pick up the paper as I leave. Who's gonna notice? And anyway, I saw it on some spy show when I was a kid. It seemed to work every time.”
Wanda found herself giggling. “I guess I never thought working in the Alibi would lead to so much excitement.”
Then a crease of worry formed on her brow.
“What's the matter?” Harmon asked.
“I don't know exactly how to explain this, but on the stuff I told you about involving the governor, there's a little complication.”
“Such as?”
“Before you share that with Dr. Duck, I need twenty-four hours to run it by someone else—a, uh, friend.”
“A friend?”
“Yes, that's all I can say for now. You just have to trust me. It's somebody who, if this stuff leaks out, could be hurt. I'm trying to give them some notice.”
Harmon nodded. “Of course, I trust you totally, Wanda. Square it with your person and then give me a thumbs-up when you want me to move.”
Harmon stood, looked around, saw the waitress and her boyfriend still engrossed in their corner booth. He beckoned to Wanda.
“Listen,” he whispered, “be careful, okay? Huff is a vicious little prick, and B.J. Duplessis would sell his own momma if he saw a buck in it. Even ole yuk'em-up Go-Boy could get nasty if his back is against the wall. And who knows what our honorable governor would do if he knew he was about to be unmasked as a bribe taker?”
Wanda looked at Harmon evenly. “Don't worry. Out where I was born, the mommas drowned all the dumb ones.”
Harmon smiled. “Oh, and one other thing,” he said.
“What's that?” Wanda replied.
Harmon leaned even closer and said, “You've made my day. I really want to thank you. This is more delicious to me than you might imagine.”
Then he kissed her, sweetly, on the cheek.
Wanda was too startled to pull away—and then realized she didn't want to.