Kent Conwell - Tony Boudreaux 08 - Death in the French Quarter (20 page)

I rolled my eyes. “Sorry, Jimmy, but we don’t even
have that”

“What?”

Briefly, I related the details of the night before.

He cursed again. “Now, we got nothing.” He paused
and I heard him draw a deep breath. “Well, Boudreaux,
you and me, we gave it a shot. When you heading back
to Austin?”

“I’m not. Not yet”

“Huh? Did I hear you right? What else can you do except get yourself in de morgue along with that punk?”

“Maybe nothing, but I haven’t had time to figure it
out. Don’t worry. I know what Bones Guilbeaux can do.
I’m not going to give him the chance to put me away
like he has the others”

After hanging up I finished my beer, then headed for
my room wracking my brain over my next step.

Part of the charm of New Orleans, of southern
Louisiana, is that because of the long growing season
many flowers often bloom more than once, and as I
climbed the outside stairs to my room I inhaled the
sweet, almost overpowering scent of jasmine and gardenia filling the courtyard, a sultry counterpoint to the
chilling danger permeating the French Quarter. I
wished I were anywhere else but here.

In my room I flipped on the window unit. By the
time I showered, shaved, and donned fresh clothes, the
room was comfortable. I plopped down on the bed.

About the only choice left was to somehow find out
just where the cache of weapons had been moved.
Chances were that the shipment had been relocated
closer to the docks for shipping.

But which dock, which pier? Two miles of piers
lined the western bank of the Mississippi along with
warehouses beyond number.

Finding a grain of gold dust on a sandy beach would
be a cinch compared to uncovering weapons under
false labels tucked away in one of hundreds of warehouses. I rolled over and stared at the wall. Without
warning, the last twenty-four hours caught up with me.

I jerked awake at five o’clock, my mind clear and
fresh, and holding the answer for which I had been
searching when I fell asleep.

All I simply had to do was follow Julie. If the cache of weapons was being readied for shipment, he would
be part of the grunt labor involved.

Ten minutes later, I leaned against the brick facade
of the Dupree Art Gallery on the corner of St. Ann and
Chartres, across the promenade from Jackson Square.

Bones’ little cadre of punks and yoyos always congregated at Rigues’ around five or six. If they had a job
going, they left in threes and fours; if not, most left
singly.

So, all I had to do was wait and watch.

Behind me a voice spoke up. “Hey there, handsome.
Looking for a good time?”

I glanced over my shoulder. A young blond in a tube
top and low-rider cutoff jeans smiled at me seductively.
She hooked a thumb in the waist of her jeans and
tugged it even lower. She couldn’t have been more than
sixteen.

With a grin, I shook my head. “No, thanks. I’m waiting for someone.”

She pouted her lips. “Won’t I do? I can show you a
good time.”

“Thanks, but no thanks”

The come hither look on her face turned cold. “Forget it then” And she strutted past, doing her best to
throw her teenage hips out of joint.

I didn’t think too much of the incident until I spotted
her returning about thirty minutes later. Suddenly, I realized that by standing in one spot too long, I was call ing attention to myself, attention that might prove difficult to explain should the occasion arise.

I headed down the sidewalk to Decatur and paused
just around the corner by Jackson Inn where I had a
partial view of Rigues’ front door across the square.

Before I could get comfortable, I spotted my little
friend in low-rider cutoffs heading up the sidewalk
toward me. I turned to retreat farther and came face to
face with Zozette Saint-Julian.

She smiled coquettishly. “We’ve got to stop meeting
like this, Tony.”

I laughed just as low-rider turned the corner. She
gave Saint-Julian a withering look as she passed.
“Friend of yours?” Saint-Julian asked.

“Not quite. Not quite.”

Her voice grew soft. “On to something?”

“Keeping an eye on Rigues’ over there.”

She took my hand. “Come with me.”

I followed her down the block and around the corner where I had been standing earlier. She opened a
door and led me up a flight of stairs to an apartment
with a wrought-iron balcony overlooking Jackson
Square.

“Will this work?”

“Perfect”

She locked the door, kicked off her high heels, and
plopped down in an overstuffed chair with roses on the
slipcover. “Whoever invented high-heel shoes should
be turned loose with a roomful of two-year-olds,” she
groaned, massaging her feet.

I looked around the tastefully appointed room. “I
thought you were staying at the Lafitte?”

She looked up at me with wide-eyed innocence. “Oh,
didn’t you know. All us high-price hookers have three
or four cribs where we can take our customers” She
pushed herself from the chair. “How about a glass of
wine? White Zinfandel all right? That’s all I have”

“Just happens to be my favorite.”

“I bet,” she shot back as she left the room.

Pulling a chair up to the French doors opening onto
the balcony, I had a perfect view of Rigues’ as the sun
slowly set in the west.

Saint-Julian returned with two classes and a saucer of
cheese and crackers. “Help yourself while I get comfortable,” she said, carrying her wine into the next
room.

She returned ten minutes later wearing loose-fitting
jeans and a baggy T-shirt. “Hope you don’t mind,” she
said, gesturing to her clothes. “But this is how I get
comfortable.”

I held up my almost empty wine glass. “Here’s to
comfort.”

“So,” she said, sitting cross-legged in the overstuffed
chair, “how are things going?”

“Not good. Every time I think we have him nailed,
he slips out. It’s almost like he can read our minds.”

“I heard one of them got whacked this morning.”

“Yeah” I told her what little I knew. “He was going
to put the finger on Bones for five murders, but
now…

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

“That’s the way it goes. But we’ll keep plugging.
Sooner or later, I tell myself. Sooner or later.”

We remained silent for several minutes until she
spoke up. “How did you ever get yourself in this?”

I glanced at her, then turned my eyes back to
Rigues’. “It’s a long, boring story.”

She rose to her feet and disappeared into the adjoining room, returning with the chilled bottle of Zinfandel.
She filled my glass. “Not as boring as mine but we got
nothing but time. Cry on my shoulder and I’ll cry on
yours”

So I told her, and for the next hour or so we exchanged stories.

Around seven o’clock, tourist traffic in the Quarter
lessened, but by eight it was increasing as the evening
party-goers hit the streets.

Just after ten-fifteen, I sat upright and peered through
the glass panes of the French doors.

Saint-Julian leaned forward. “Something?”

“Yeah. Four of them. Heading east. Toward the
river.” I started for the door.

“You’re going to follow them?”

I shrugged. “What else?”

“Then here” She grabbed a battered Panama hat
from a hall tree and tossed it to me. “Play the tourist.”

“Thanks” I set the hat on my head at a rakish angle.
“Okay?”
?

She smiled sadly. “Yeah. Be careful.” She paused,
then added somberly, “You know, Tony, the longer you stay after this, the more chances Bones has of finding
you out.”

She was right, and I reminded myself of that sobering
thought as I hurried along the crowded sidewalk hoping
to intersect the gang members before they disappeared.

At the corner by the Jackson Inn, I spotted the small
cluster across the street, passing in front of Cafe du
Monde, heading north. Mule and Hummer were in
front followed by Gramps and Ziggy. I frowned, wondering what had happened to Julie and Ham.

I remained on the opposite side of the street until
they angled up North Peters across the street from the
French Market. A stucco wall paralleled the sidewalk
for a block.

I dashed across the street and mixed in with the
shoulder-to-shoulder crowd browsing the market, a
venue two blocks long housing hundreds of vendors
hawking everything from cheap jewelry to sweet potatoes. I pushed through the crowd, but when I reached
North Peters the sidewalk was empty.

I looked up and down for the cluster of Redbones but
they were nowhere to be seen. Then at the end of the
stucco wall I spotted a worn path in the weeds leading
toward the river.

Moving cautiously, I peered around the corner of the
wall and glimpsed several dark figures cross an open
lot, then suddenly vanish into a larger, blacker object.
They seemed to be heading in the direction of a row of
warehouses.

A voice jerked me around. “Hey, buddy. What are
you up to?” A grim-faced police officer was glaring at
me from the shotgun seat of a police cruiser at the curb.

Throwing my arms out to the side, I shook my head.
“Nothing, Officer. I was just wondering where this path
went. That’s all.”

He studied me a moment, probably contemplating
whether he should go to the effort of climbing out of the
cruiser and checking me out, or simply taking my word.

I tried to help him out. “This is my first trip to New
Orleans, Officer. I don’t want to miss a thing.”

A tolerant frown twisted his lips, and he shook his
head. “Well, just stay on the streets. That’s private
property back there. Belongs to Standard Coal, and it’s
posted”

“Don’t worry about me. I’m afraid of the dark”

He eyed me skeptically then snorted and made a
forward gesture with his left hand, and the cruiser
sped away.

I waited until it was out of sight, then slipped around
the wall and hurried down the path.

A huge dark object loomed ahead, and as my eyes
grew accustomed to the dark I realized it was a mountain of coal awaiting shipment. Two hundred yards to
the north, lights came on inside one of the warehouses.

I left the worn path, heading for the water’s edge
where I hoped to find a ladder on which I could scale the
pier and come in from the river side of the warehouse.

The faint glow of light from the French Quarter provided a faint degree of illumination. The dark pier jut ted out over the river fifty or sixty feet, supported by
massive pilings that had been pounded hundreds of feet
into the river’s bed. I spotted a ladder fastened to the
corner piling several feet beyond the river’s edge. A series of X-framed timbers between the pilings supported
the pier above.

Taking a deep breath, I shinnied along the support to
the piling and quickly clambered up, pausing to peer
over the edge of the pier.

The lights from the warehouse laid out a row of yellow rectangles across the heavy timbers of the pier.
Suddenly, a faint sound came from the warehouse before me. I strained to hear more but all I could make out
were the muffled sounds of the French Quarter and the
guttural rumbling of diesel engines as tugboats and
ocean-going tankers passed.

Staying low, I hurried into the shadows beneath the
windows and pressed up against the metal wall to catch
my breath. My heart was thudding against my chest.

From inside came the muffled whining of forklifts. I
peered over the sill of a window. Rows of cartons and
crates filled the cavernous warehouse, some stacked
several feet high.

I spotted a forklift carrying a pallet of wooden crates
emerge from the rear of the warehouse. Mule was driving. He set the pallet near the front entrance where Ziggy
and Gramps began stenciling addresses on the crates.

As Mule disappeared into the rear of the warehouse
for another load, Hummer emerged on a forklift with
another pallet of crates, depositing it beside the first.

For the next thirty minutes, the activity continued
until two dozen pallets had been stacked near the frontloading gate and the crates stenciled with addresses.

Mule pulled up beside Ziggy and motioned to the adjoining warehouse. The spiked-haired young man nodded and disappeared through a large door. Moments
later, lights in the adjacent warehouse flashed on, and
the entire operation moved over. When Ziggy returned,
he turned off the lights in the first warehouse, then followed the others.

Moving cautiously, I circled the darkened warehouse
where I discovered a broken window, which I unlocked
and shoved open. I crawled through it and made my
way down the rows of crates and cartons, taking care
not to make any noise despite the whining groans of the
forklifts.

Finally, I crouched by the shipment the Redbones
had put together. From the dim glow of the light spilling
from the adjoining door, I read the stenciled labels.

Farm equipment. I shook my head as I scanned the
addresses. I couldn’t help shaking my head at Bones’
audacity. They were all being shipped to the American
embassy in Damascus, Syria, the mother of all terrorist
countries in the Middle East.