The Shoal of Time Read online

  Ashley was waiting for me outside her hotel as promised. The sun brought out the red highlights in her hair. Too glossy and vibrant to be a dye job, I decided as I pulled up beside her. She was nicely dressed, in hunter-green wool slacks and a rust-colored sweater that was both appropriate for the weather yet still managed to not hide her curves. The sweater had help from a dark-brown leather jacket that also did a nice job of not hiding her curves.

  She got in. “Where shall we go?” she asked as she leaned over to kiss me on the cheek.

  “What would you like?”

  “Something I can’t get when I leave here.”

  “That includes a lot of things,” I said as I pulled out into the traffic. “Why do I suspect you won’t like boiled crawfish for brunch?”

  “Because you know me too well,” she said with a laugh.

  “I have an idea,” I said, remembering a restaurant on Poydras. It had valet parking, and the last time I was there the food was excellent. I was pretty sure they had brunch, and it was right around the corner from Ashley’s hotel.

  As I pulled up in front, Ashley said, “Oh, this is where you meant?”

  “Yes, is this okay? Don’t tell me you’ve eaten here recently?”

  “No, this is fine. Can’t eat in places like this on a government salary.”

  “Trust me, I don’t eat here often,” I said as I handed the key to the valet.

  “But I have to treat,” she said once we joined each other on the sidewalk.

  “Why? Is there a government rule?”

  “I asked you to meet me.”

  We entered the hotel the restaurant was attached to. “Yes, but I chose the place. Let me pay.”

  She sighed. “Only if you let me pay for everything when we go out.”

  “Sounds like a good deal,” I agreed as we presented ourselves at the maître d’ station.

  “Ah, welcome back,” he said. “It’s good to see you here again.” It had been over six months since I’d been here. Torbin had gotten his new job and Cordelia was feeling well enough to go out, so we’d come here.

  “You’re mistaken,” Ashley said. “I’ve never been here.”

  “I think he means me,” I replied. “I’ve been here before, and it’s excellent.”

  The maître d’ smiled as if to say we were both right. Although we didn’t have a reservation, they had a table open.

  Once we’d settled and ordered, Ashley said, “Let’s do business first.” She added, “Then pleasure.”

  “Business it is, then,” I agreed, taking a sip of water to hide the smile on my face.

  “I wanted to update you on the warehouse. I checked with the people there and they said they didn’t find a record book like you described. It may be well hidden.”

  “I threw it at him,” I remembered.

  “You what?”

  “I was looking at it when the big tattooed guy surprised me. He didn’t look friendly. I threw it at him to distract him so I could get away. It should be out in the open.”

  “Good thinking,” Ashley said. “If that’s the case, he probably took it with him. It might have been too valuable to leave around.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “There wasn’t much there to prove who’s behind it, but at least they won’t be using that site anymore.”

  “Did the locals shut it down?”

  “They’re still trying to sort all the pieces together.”

  “But you’ve talked to them and let them know the real purpose of that place, right?”

  “It’s more complicated than that. We can’t bring in every local cop without risking they’re on the take or just might mention something over beers to the wrong person, so we have to be very selective in whom we tell what’s going on.”

  “Like me?” I asked.

  She caught my meaning—how could she trust me and not actual cops? “Yes, like you. I know I can trust you, but even so I haven’t told you everything. I’m sure you understand that. Also, our assumption was the warehouse was no longer being used. We didn’t intend to stumble on an active operation with you in tow.”

  I nodded.

  She continued, “So you became more involved than we planned. Clearly you’re not a crook, and in some ways you being private helps. Cops don’t make a lot of money and it’s easy to tempt them.”

  “Us PIs aren’t exactly giving Wall Street brokers a run for their money.”

  She covered her hand with mine. “I know that. But you do make enough to occasionally eat at a place like this. Own your house.”

  “The bank owns a good part of it,” I interjected.

  She smiled. “Yes, but you qualified for a mortgage and can afford to pay it.”

  The truth was Cordelia used her money to put a large down payment, close to half, on the house. She had more money than I did and felt—at least then—that she should pay more. We had split the remaining payments between us. Now I paid it on my own. I could manage it, but it did mean I had to skimp on other things. However, I wasn’t getting into that with Ashley.

  She was talking. “It’s different when you have a family, wife, some kids and want to take care of them and realize that buying a house, any house, let alone the one you’d like, is far beyond you. Makes it easy to decide that playing by the rules is a sucker’s game.”

  “Okay, so you trust me—even though you can’t tell me everything—in a way you can’t trust the locals. Where does that leave you in what you can do?”

  The waiter brought our food. Ashley had chosen the white chocolate Belgian waffle. I went with a more traditional breakfast, eggs, bacon, grits and a biscuit. I needed something to absorb the recent extra caffeine and alcohol.

  “Much as we’d like to capture every criminal, stopping a small-time gray-market operation is not our top priority.”

  “That’s what you think was happening at that warehouse?” I took a bite. Grits can either be a lump of stone or a slice of heaven. These were on the latter side of the scale. If they didn’t make my stomach right, nothing would.

  “It’s what we have proof for so far. Yes, we know it’s more than that, but the challenge is to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.”

  “What about the women?”

  “What women?” she asked, fork stopped in midair.

  “The ones dragged out of the river.”

  “How did you find out about them?”

  “I have contacts,” I said. “Could their death be related?”

  “Related how?” she asked, taking a bite that muffled her last word.

  “A message to women who might try to escape. Being a forced prostitute is better than floating in the river with a stake in your vagina.”

  “Wow,” Ashley said, wiping her mouth. “You have good contacts. I didn’t think those details had been released.”

  “As far as I know they haven’t. Back to my original question, can they be related?”

  She took a sip of her coffee before answering. “Yes, they can. One of the things I can’t tell you is how.”

  “Can’t or don’t know?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes. Do you know or not?”

  “We…suspect. But it gets back to having proof. That’s the hard part.”

  “What do you have to do to get proof?”

  “Catching them in the act is nice,” she said with a wry smile.

  “In the act of killing more women?”

  “Before that would be best.” She took the last bite of her waffle.

  I chewed on some bacon.

  “We’re staking out what we think is his office.”

  “But you’re not sure.”

  “Can’t be unless we get in there, but can’t go in without probable cause to do so.”

  “What if someone broke in? What happens if a petty thief breaks into a place where there is evidence of a major crime?”

  “Evidence in plain sight is admissible,” she said, then quickly added, “I c
an’t ask you to do anything illegal.”

  “You’re not asking me anything. We’re just talking hypothetically.”

  “Hypothetically, of course. Just coincidence that someone happens on this particular location.”

  “Or there could be a connection,” I said, finishing the last of my eggs. “Someone overhears something to make them think they might find money or drugs there.”

  “At times that’s how things work out, we get a bit of luck and everything falls into place.”

  The waiter brought the bill. I didn’t even look at it, just gave him my credit card.

  “You’re going to need to do surveillance on this place, right?” I asked. “I have a lot of experience.”

  “We are shorthanded. Could be helpful to have you spell the rest of the team. I’ll run it by the others and see what they think. We could have you watch the building when we know no one is there. Just in case.” She smiled.

  I returned her smile.

  “Now some other business,” she said. “We need a better idea of the land here. Well, the land and the sea. How could women, goods, and drugs be smuggled in? Are you up to help us with that?”

  “This place is a sieve. Waterways everywhere.”

  The waiter brought the check back. I added twenty percent and signed it.

  Once he had cleared away our dishes and taken the check, she asked, “If you were going to smuggle something in here, how would you do it?”

  “I’m probably not the model you want. If I were going to do anything it’d be something small like rubies. Tie a parcel to a crab trap and have someone else pick it up from there.”

  “Not a great plan for human cargo.”

  “No, and that’s why asking me that question probably isn’t a great help. I guess I can’t conceive of hauling human cargo—unwilling human cargo around.”

  “Can it be done?”

  “It obviously seems to be. There’s a lot of water here, bayous, lakes, inlets.”

  “How about the river?”

  “Not likely. Most of it has levees, and that means you need a dock for a boat. Plus it’s full of river traffic and patrolled by the Coast Guard. Not to mention you need someone who knows how to navigate it. Commercial traffic has a bar pilot who meets ships at the mouth of the river, and the pilot, not the captain, steers the ship in because you need someone who knows the river.”

  “Interesting,” she said. “Okay, how about a homework assignment. Can you come up with some possible ways to smuggle human cargo through here?” She stood up.

  “I can,” I said, also standing. I helped her with her jacket. “But for everyone I think of there are probably fifty more. It really depends on who their connections are. The bayou rats each know different areas. The ones I know may be different from the ones they do.”

  “Very good point. But what I’m trying to do is show my team how easy it is to do this here and why some of the bigger organizations might choose a smaller city like New Orleans for their home base.”

  “Okay, I’ll put something together.” We started to walk out of the restaurant. “You’re going to check about the surveillance job, right?”

  “I am indeed. I might even know something by tonight. Can you possibly be available on such short notice?”

  I handed the valet my claim check. “Lucky for you, I have nothing pressing.”

  “I’ll call you later today, then. We’ll have to postpone dinner until we’re done with the surveillance. But perhaps we can plan to meet tomorrow. Lunch?”

  “Lunch would be great. I’ll wait for your call.”

  “Thank you. This was a great choice. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m close enough to my hotel I can walk back. No need for you to chauffeur me.” She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, close to my lips.

  I waited for my car. The sunshine felt good on my face.

  The valet brought my car. I tipped him a five. Then had to squirrel around the one-way streets of the CBD to get going the way I wanted to.

  I was heading back to my office. I would take Ashley up on her assignment, although I thought it would be less than useful. If they were trafficking here, it would be through the routes they knew best or had best access to. There was no way to know that unless we had more information on them.

  But she had asked; I would do it. And wait for her phone call.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I took as my starting point the raided warehouse around the Jean Lafitte area. Even narrowing it down that much still left a lot of options. It would depend on what kind of boat they were operating, but unless it was something huge, they could get in multiple ways. And this was just from looking at the map. I knew the waterways around Bayou St. Jack, where I’d grown up, much better. Or had known them, I reminded myself. Wind and waves change everything. Hurricane Katrina and the smaller ones before and after had shifted where the water met the land.

  “Nothing stays the same, does it,” I said aloud, talking to myself, to the sun shining in through the window. I still owned the land out there, but it was wild now, nothing to mark it save for a rotten gate post and the property taxes I paid every year. Until Katrina, the house I’d grown up in was there. We’d occasionally go there to get away from the city, a weekend of fishing and sitting on the wraparound porch to listen to the crickets and bullfrogs. But it had been washed away, nothing left save for what the water brought from other destroyed homes.

  Nothing stays the same. I glanced again at the map I’d marked up. My life hadn’t. Nobody’s life did. I wondered how Madame Celeste—not likely to be her real name—had come to where she now found herself. Maybe I thought of her because her journey seemed so far from my own. Had she chosen that life, or just done the best she could with the choices she was given? Like Bianca, except as a black man in a body that wanted to be a woman, she probably had far fewer choices.

  Ashley, I could understand. Grew up in a family of cops, decided she wanted to do something besides birth babies, and found herself in law enforcement. Maybe because I was given her choices, similar ones, and not the choices Bianca or Madame Celeste had been given.

  I looked again at the map. It would do. If Ashley wanted something more thorough, she could ask.

  It wasn’t until almost five when she called.

  “Hey, glad I caught you,” she greeted me.

  “You said you’d call. I’ve kept my phone around.”

  “It’s a go. All we’re asking you to do is sit around in a chilly car and observe an empty building. If you see anything that seems suspicious or out of the ordinary, you call us. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I agreed. If I got bored and investigated further, that was all on my own.

  She gave me the address. It was out in the suburbs, in the I-10 service roads. I hoped it wasn’t a well-secured office building. Not impossible, but it would make breaking in harder.

  “Are you part of the surveillance team?” I asked. I could hear traffic noise in the background.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m handing it off to Jack shortly. You’ll take over for him at nine. Sandy will relieve you around two a.m. Don’t talk or act like you know each other. We want to be as careful as possible.”

  “Got that.”

  “Good luck and stay warm. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  We agreed to meet around one for lunch, as I would have a late night. The game was afoot. After that, I closed up my office and headed for the promised workout at the gym and then home.

  But after I got there, I wondered why I’d bothered. It was just another place to pass the time in.

  “Better kitchen,” I reminded myself. Maybe it was time to cook an actual meal.

  That would require going to an actual grocery store. I settled for rice with beans from a can, with some caramelized onions mixed in. I plopped myself in front of the TV to eat and to pass the time until I needed to leave. I’d be alone in the car, beans wouldn’t matter.

  I am getting too old for this, I thought as I peed one last ti
me. Nine o’clock felt more like bedtime than time to head out into the night for work. It was a little after eight. I wanted to give myself plenty of time to get there and locate the exact address. I don’t travel out in the suburbs much; I had no mental space for them, so I couldn’t picture this location although I must have driven by it countless times.

  When the sun went down, so did the temperatures. I was dressed warmly. Heavy black jeans, Saints long-sleeve T-shirt covered by a dark gray zip-up sweatshirt. If I got too chilly, I could always turn the car on. I had a full tank of gas as well.

  Traffic was light and mostly sane.

  Instead of heading straight to the parking lot where I’d find Jack, I drove around the area. I wanted to know the roads that led in and out. Due to the canals, a number of streets dead end. While I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary, I didn’t want to risk having to flee and finding my way blocked.

  The location was just off one of the exits. Much of the area was residential, save for what fronted the part closest to the exit. In the last few years, they’ve built a long wall between the interstate and the surrounding area. The good news was that the place was protected by the wall, so no one driving by on I-10 could see. If a little B&E took place, that could be very useful. Not that I was planning to do anything tonight. Much as I wanted this to be over so Ashley and I could finally be free to spend an evening—and perhaps a night—together, I didn’t want to rush into this. Another night or even two checking things out, even if it meant dragging myself out here this late, was a good plan. The dead women meant these guys didn’t play around.

  It was an older neighborhood, the small houses indicating most of them were built in the fifties or sixties, probably before the interstate bisected the neighborhood. The cars here were not the latest models; the streets were quiet, with few people out. The people who lived here worked and had to be in bed to get up in the morning. Good in that few inhabitants would be around; not so good in that this was the kind of place where a strange car or person would be noticed.