An Evil Shadow (5 page)

“Who the hell for?” Val asked, more perplexed than
ever.

Duval took another deep breath. “I need a white
knight. The man I saw kill my mother has resurfaced and has been following me.
I saw him in a car outside my apartment and again near the restaurant where I
work. The first time I thought I was imagining things, but the second time
proved it. Since then, I’ve been making it hard for him. Left my job and have
been sleeping at friends’ apartments, but once I start university, he’ll know
where to find me. Will you be my white knight?”

“Go to the police department.”

Her moisture-filled eyes fixed on Val. “They wouldn’t
want to know; not until it’s too late.”

“Hire a private investigator.”

“I don’t have the money for that. I want him stopped.
I thought if you were to accept the campus police chief’s job, then it would be
your duty to protect me.”

“What makes you think he’s planning to do anything
after all this time? You’ve kept your silence for ten years.”

“What other reason would he have for following me?”

He shrugged. “What’s his name?”

She smiled tentatively. “You believe me?”

“I didn’t say that. What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. I’ve made a sketch of him. I see his
face each night in my dreams.”

Duval reached into her purse and extracted a folded
sheet of paper. She opened it and flattened it out on her knees before handing
it to him. “I’ll never forget the way he looked at me after he killed my
mother.”

The pencil sketch was a good likeness. Duval had
caught the facial characteristics of ex-policeman Donny Jackson. Val refolded
the sheet of paper and slipped it into the pocket of his robe.

“Do you recognize him?”

“Yeah. You were right about him being a policeman.”

Duval relaxed her face. “Now you have to believe me.”

“No, now it’s time for you to leave. You’ve taken up
enough of my morning with your childish games.” He took her by the arm and
pulled her to her feet. “I don’t know what your motivation is, or what you were
hoping to achieve by this charade. It was well thought out though, I’ll give
you that. You almost had me buying into it. Blaming your mother’s murder on a
police officer would have helped to explain a lot: the lack of defense wounds
on your mother’s arms; your unprovoked attack on me. Especially when the
officer you’re pointing a finger at is one who was kicked off of the department
in disgrace. Give a cop a bad rep and the public is all too willing to believe
the worse.”

He pushed her towards the door.

She tried to shake his hand off. “I’m telling you the
truth. How else could I known what he looked like?”

“Jackson’s photograph was splashed all over the
newspapers and television news for the best part of a week. You drew your
sketch from that.”

He slammed the door hard after her.

CHAPTER FIVE

Arena Victory’s corporate headquarters were on Loyola,
across from city hall, a few blocks from the Superdome. The building, a squat
cylinder of green marble and reflective glass, had been purpose-built by the
company as a testament to its phenomenal growth in the early nineties. Their
core business was the manufacture of sport footwear. Astute marketing and the
blank-check recruitment of top sport stars to endorse its products had
transformed the company from a small-time Louisiana slipper manufacturer into a
multinational success. Two teenagers out of every three would trade their souls
to be the first kid on the block with a pair of the latest AVs. Image is
everything with American youth, and Arena Victory had it in spades.

That’s why it was the talk of the police department
when Donny Jackson walked into a highly paid corporate-security job with AV
exactly two months after being canned from the force.

Jackson and his radio-car partner, Bill Trochan, had
been convicted of helping themselves to a murdered woman’s jewelry. They had
been dispatched to answer a 911 call in the Garden District and found the
victim lying prone on her bed, her eyes staring emptily, one hand clutching the
phone. She had been strangled with a computer electrical cable. They checked
for signs of life and, finding none, made a radio call to the homicide
detectives and the medical examiner. With time on their hands, and only a
corpse for company, the two uniforms spent the next twenty minutes rifling
through the bedroom drawers and closets. They found three hundred dollars in
cash and a gold Rolex. Jackson kept the cash, Trochan the watch.

No one was more surprised than them when the medical
examiner arrived and, having performed a circumspect search for vital signs,
discovered that the victim was still very much alive. The removal of the
computer cable and the administration of CPR and an oxygen mask led swiftly to
the low-point in the lives of the two police officers. Before she would allow
paramedics to load her onto the ambulances gurney, she insisted, in a barely
audible croak, that the uniformed officers be made empty their pockets in front
of the homicide detectives, one of whom was Detective Lieutenant Val Bosanquet.
The press scavengers enjoyed a feeding frenzy when the news broke.

Val left his car in a quiet, brick-paved alley and
walked half a block to AV’s front entrance. He explained to the girl behind the
reception desk that he wanted to speak to Donny Jackson. She asked for his
name, then pecked at a few keys on her computer and told him to take a seat.
Someone would be along in a moment or two.

The moment or two developed into a quarter of an hour.
Val spent the first five minutes watching the young corporate Turks entering
and leaving the building. It seemed that no one over the age of twenty-five
worked for AV. Feeling his age, he picked up a glossy prospectus for AV’s
upcoming stock market flotation and flicked through it. Inside the front cover
was a map showing AV’s principal manufacturing plants across the globe: one in
New Delhi, one in Caracas, another in Port-au-Prince, one under construction in
Hanoi. He wondered if any of the institutions that were falling over themselves
to invest, appreciated the irony that few of AV’s manufacturing employees could
ever hope to purchase the product they had made.

“Jarvis Kraftson,” boomed the voice of a slick
thirty-something as he crossed the foyer towards Val. “Vice-president of Human
Resources.”

“Val Bosanquet.” They shook hands.

Kraftson’s palm was soft and felt oily, his suit shiny
and expensive. Val speculated as to what percentage of casual inquiries at AV’s
front desk was attended to by vice-presidents.

‘‘Nice place you have here.’’

“I’m told you made a request to speak with Donny
Jackson. May I ask in what respect?”

“It’s a private matter. Mainly beer and broads. I used
to work alongside him in the police department.”

Kraftson flicked a strand of blonde hair back behind
his ear. His eyes were the same vivid blue as a pool ball. “You’re positive it
has no connection with Arena Victory?”

“You’ve got to be kidding. I wouldn’t have troubled
you only his home number’s not listed and I was in the neighborhood. Last I
heard, Donny was working here.”

Kraftson’s lips formed into a predatory smile. “Not
any longer. I apologize if I seem unduly cautious, but we had to let Mister
Jackson go and, regrettably, not under the best of circumstances. Arena Victory
is proud of its reputation as a fair employer, but there are sometimes those
who would delight in besmirching our name. We’re all a bit keyed up over the
flotation.”

“It don’t come as no surprise. What was old Donny up
to this time? I lay twenty it was his pecker got him fired. He never could
resist a short skirt or a high chest.”

“I couldn’t comment on that — it would be against
company policy.”

“Any chance of a current address for him?”

“I’m sorry, that would be---”

“---against company policy. When did you fire him?”

“Just over a year ago. If there is nothing else I can
do for you, Mr Bosanquet, I’ll say good afternoon.”

“Maybe there is another favor you could do me. Take a
time-out and explain how come a company so mindful of its image would hire a
man who’d steal from a corpse.”

Kraftson’s eyes hardened, but his answer was a
polished as he was. “We believe that everyone deserves a second chance.
Regrettably, some fail to grasp the opportunity.”

Val left Kraftson standing in the foyer and departed.
As he crossed the paved plaza in front of the building, his attention was
caught by Arena Victory’s logo erected on top of a chunk of raw green marble
that had water streaming down its flanks. The logo was cast in bronze and was
covered in verdigris. A mammoth splayed letter A sat astride a mammoth V. They
were surrounded by a laurel wreath of honor. For years he had been seeing the
logo stitched on the sides of countless sneakers and on big-dollar
Hollywood-produced TV advertisements, but never before had he realized how much
it resembled the dividers and square of Masonic imagery.

Kraftson remained motionless until his visitor had
left the building. Then he waved over a man who had been observing from the
rear of the foyer. The man listened carefully as Kraftson gave him swift and
concise instructions. His manner made it clear there were to be no foul-ups.

Val detested cell phones and refused to carry one. He
found a pay phone and called work. He told the production manager that he
wouldn’t be coming in that day, or any other day for the foreseeable future.
The man passed him on to another of the firm’s partners and Val explained that
his leave of absence was unavoidable. His partner reacted scathingly, but came
around when Val explained how any detrimental effect of his leave of absence
could be minimized. They had on the payroll a young female designer who was
very capable and desperate for an opportunity to prove herself. If she didn’t
get it soon, they would lose her. So compelling were his proposals, it felt
like he was talking himself out of a job, so he called his brother and talked
himself into another. Marcus didn’t try to conceal his surprise at hearing from
him.

“I'll take the Chief’s job on three conditions,” Val
said.

“Which are?” Marcus asked warily.

“It will be for a single semester only. After that,
you’ll have to find someone else.”

“And?”

“I refuse to wear a uniform.”

“The third?”

“I won’t carry a gun.”

“If that’s the way you want it, it’s fine with me
.
What made you change your mind?”

“Something I should have seen ten years ago,” Val
said, before hanging up.

Back in the alley, fumbling for the car keys in his
jacket pocket, Val’s path was suddenly blocked by a couple of muggers on early
shift. They must have followed him into the alley, Val assumed, though he
hadn’t been aware of them until they were in his face. The one holding the
blood-filled syringe was white and had breath that smelt worse than week-old
road-kill.

“Let’s have the wallet, podna.” His voice sounded
hoarse as though somebody had poured lye down his throat. Val could see blood
smears on the syringe’s needle.

“Best do what he says,” his Latin accomplice
encouraged. “You don’t want a taste of the virus.”

The Latin was holding a telescopic steel baton in his
right hand and was slapping it against the palm of his left. Extended, it could
break an arm or crack a skull.

“Sure. Anything you say. Just don’t stick me.” Val
reached slowly around to his hip pocket and pulled his wallet out. They were
alone in the alley. The whites of their eyes were too clear for druggies, but
Val had been wrong before.

“Give it here,” the Latin said, snapping it from his
hands.

He opened it and scanned the contents. Val’s eyes
never left his.

“Is this all you’re carrying?” the man asked finally.
“A lousy fifty bucks.”

The guy holding the syringe stabbed it towards Val’s
throat.

“You holding out on us?”

Val shook his head. “That’s it. I swear it.”

That seemed to satisfy them and they started to back
off
.

“Now’s not the time to try anything dumb,” the Latin
warned.

They turned on their heels and loped off down the
alley.

Val opened the car door and climbed in. What sort of
mugger, he wondered, turning the key in the ignition, takes the time to read
the name on his victim’s driving license before counting the cash? He had a
strong feeling that he knew why Jarvis Kraftson had kept him waiting so long in
the foyer.

Bill Trochan opened the door of his room in a run-down
single resident occupancy hotel wearing nothing but a set of graying skivvies.
It took him a moment or two to recognize Val.

 
Trochan sucked
catarrh back down his throat. "What the fuck do you want?”

He was a small man and must have been right on the
minimum height requirement for the department. He had a tiny, round face and a
lopsided grin that made him appear to be constantly pulling a W.C. Fields
impression.

“Can we talk inside?”

Trochan swung back the door and waved him in. The TV
was on, though the sound was turned down. Everything in the room was a shade of
brown. The drapes were sienna, the carpeting a dark rust color, and the
furniture a cheap mahogany veneer. The stale air smelt strongly of dirty socks
and milk on the turn.

“Okay, now you’re in. What do you want?”

“To see you put on some clothes.”

“You’re a funny man.”

Trochan slipped on a pair of trousers, but left it at
that. His trouser waistband needed cinching with a belt.

“You've dropped some weight since you were at Garden,”
Val said.

“It’s the welfare diet. You get to eat alternate days.
You can fucking leave now if all you want to do is joke and talk nutrition.”

“I’m trying to locate Donny Jackson. I thought you
might be able to point me in the right direction.”

Trochan didn’t seem surprised by the inquiry, but he
didn’t answer it either.

“I hear you quit the department,” Trochan said. “You
walked; you weren’t pushed. What made you do something like that?”

Val had a reply he knew would satisfy him. “I was
tired of messing with people’s lives.”

Trochan lifted a pack of cigarettes from the table and
slid one out. He lit it and took a long drag. “I know what you mean. They take
two coonasses like Jackson and me outa the swamp, send us back to school for a
couple of months, empower us with enough authority to make our heads spin and
let us carry a shield and a gun to back it up, then turn us loose in a
cesspool. They say a city gets the police force it deserves. Goes a long way to
explaining why the NOPD are the poorest paid cops in the country.”

He blew a thick stream of blue smoke from his nose.

“I’m not making excuses for what I did. I always knew
we’d be caught sooner or later, I’ve been a fatalist since the first time my
father give me a licking with his belt. That’s why I don’t hold no grudge
against you for turning us in.”

“Where’s Jackson’s crib?”

“Don’t know. It sure ain’t in any lousy SR0. The
Fairmont is more that sonofabitch’s style. He gave up his apartment soon after
he started work with AV and moved someplace else. Your guess is as good as
mine. I heard he was clocking up a heap of air miles for them.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Must have been about six months ago. I ran into him
in the Quarter.”