Authors: Greg Herren
I heard a muffled sound, like someone trying to talk through a gag.
I pushed the door open and gasped.
Dr. Fleming lay on the floor on his side, bound and gagged.
He thumped the floor again with his feet, his watery green eyes looking at me pleadingly.
“Oh my God!” I rushed to his side, yelling for Taylor at the same time. I loosened the gag, sliding it down over his chin. He gasped for air as I helped him up to a sitting position. “Are you all right?”
He nodded, his face red. “Can…you…untie…me…please.”
The knots were too tight, so I had to get a butcher knife and saw through the ropes. When Taylor appeared in the doorway, I ordered him to call the police.
“No, no—please don’t,” Dr. Fleming begged as I finally managed to get the ropes off his wrists. He took the knife from me and cut through the ropes around his ankles. He stood up, breathing hard, and set the knife down on the kitchen counter. He rubbed his wrists, which were red where the ropes had bit into the skin. “I really don’t want the police involved.” He picked up a pair of wire-framed glasses off the floor beneath the kitchen table.
He wasn’t very tall, maybe an inch or so taller than me. He was wearing khaki shorts that sagged underneath a round belly and stopped just above his knees. His calves were bony and covered in thick black hair. He was wearing a dark green Polo shirt with half-moons of sweat at the armpits, and his thinning dark hair was also slick with sweat. He got a glass from a cabinet and filled it with water from a plastic jug inside his refrigerator, gulping it down quickly.
“You were tied up in your kitchen,” I objected with a frown. Why didn’t he want to call the cops? What was going on here?
He goggled at me. “I know you, don’t I?” He placed the glass in the sink. “You look familiar.”
“We met at a party a few months ago, at my grandparents’—the Diderots?” I replied, sticking out my right hand. “Scotty Bradley. This is Taylor Rutledge.”
“Yes.” He took my hand. His was warm, soft, and moist. “Yes, of course. Your grandparents are wonderful people, and they certainly know how to throw a party.” He smiled at me. His teeth were yellowed by nicotine, and not particularly straight. He hadn’t shaved that morning, so there was salt-and-pepper stubble all over his chin and neck.
“That they do.” I nodded, and he smiled at Taylor, looking him up and down in a way that kind of turned my stomach. I remembered him hitting on my uncle Misha and Colin at the Thoth party and bristled. He also seemed remarkably calm and collected for someone who’d been bound and gagged in his own kitchen just a few minutes earlier.
“I don’t understand why you don’t want me to call the police,” I said again. “What happened, Dr. Fleming?”
“Please, call me Barney. I’m sorry, where are my manners? Would either of you like something to drink?” When we both declined, he got his own glass back from the sink and refilled it from the jug again. He leaned back against the counter. “That’s right, you’re a private investigator, aren’t you?” His forehead creased. “Maybe
you
can help me. Why don’t we all have a seat in the living room and talk?”
Taylor and I followed him into the living room and sat down in what I thought was the sitting area. “What’s going on, Dr. Fleming?” I asked. “Who tied you up?”
“I’m afraid I may have gotten into something I shouldn’t have gotten involved in,” he said, removing his glasses and wiping the lenses on his T-shirt. “As you may know, my specialty is Louisiana history. I’m currently working on a history of the Huey Long organization, his years in power in Louisiana. He was a remarkable man, a most remarkable man.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about Huey Long,” I replied. “Other than he was corrupt, of course.”
He rolled his eyes. “Huey Long wasn’t corrupt. A corrupt man enriches himself at the public trough. Huey didn’t make himself rich.” He shook his head. “Anyway, my work isn’t going as quickly as it should, because—well, never mind why, that’s irrelevant, isn’t it? You’re interested in what happened here today.” He took his glasses off, wiped them with a chamois cloth sitting on the coffee table, and placed them back on his nose. He gave me a phony-looking smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “A few months ago, a man came to see me in my office on campus and offered me a very generous grant to help me with my research.” He got a dreamy look in his eye. “Enough money so that I could afford to hire not only a research assistant, but a fact checker for the manuscript, even so I could take an unpaid sabbatical from the university if I needed to. In exchange, he simply wanted me to let him know if I came across the Porterie diary in my research, or anything about it.”
This got my attention. I leaned forward. “The Porterie diary? What exactly is that?” I gave Taylor a warning look I hoped he knew meant for him to keep his mouth shut and let me do the talking.
“It really is criminal how little the people in this state know about its history.” He scowled, pointing an index finger at Taylor. “Make sure you learn Louisiana history, son. Make sure you know and understand it. There’s a lot we can learn from history, if we study it and learn the lessons it has to teach us.” He leaned back in his chair. “Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it—and you’d be horrified to know how true that quote really is.”
Taylor bit his lower lip and nodded.
Dr. Fleming cleared his throat. “When Huey Long was just getting started in politics, he befriended a New Orleans businessman who was also interested in political power. That man’s name was Warren Porterie. Warren had been a big donor to the political machine controlling New Orleans at the time, but he was tired of them and thought it was time for things in both New Orleans and Louisiana to change. He really liked Huey and became involved in the machine he was building. Warren wasn’t interested in kickbacks or a position for himself. He was primarily interested in making money through his businesses, and he believed that the best way for him to get more customers was to create them—and Huey was all about helping the poor.” He shrugged. “No one really knows why Warren Porterie became so aligned with Huey, but it’s a fact. Do you know the story of the deduct box?”
Taylor looked confused, but I said, “Yes. The deduct box was Huey’s campaign war chest, and it was rumored to have a couple of million dollars in cash in it.”
“A couple of million dollars was a lot of money back then,” Dr. Fleming observed. “I doubt there was ever more than a hundred thousand dollars in it. I don’t know how to adjust for inflation, but a hundred thousand dollars in the 1930s would probably be about ten million dollars in today’s money, maybe? But Warren Porterie was the only person Huey ever trusted with the deduct box. After Huey was assassinated, the deduct box was missing. Huey had moved it out of the safe at the Roosevelt Hotel only a couple of days before he died, and he never told anyone what he had done with it. He died before he could say where he’d put it. Obviously, the logical conclusion at the time was he’d given it to Warren Porterie, the only person he’d ever trusted it with before. Unfortunately, the very same night Huey was shot and killed, Warren Porterie was also killed—he was in a car accident just outside of New Orleans—he was heading for the north shore. His car flipped over, killing him and his mistress instantly.” He snorted. “Of course, that never got into the papers—that he was with his mistress, I mean—the Porteries were too powerful and too wealthy for
that.
But that’s the true story. And his diaries were also missing—he was quite famous for keeping a diary. Huey always joked that Warren’s diaries would ruin everyone in Louisiana some day.” He smiled at me. “It’s generally always been believed that his last diary, the missing one, has the location of where he hid the deduct box. And this millionaire who wanted to fund my research—he was very interested in the Porterie diary. What else could I conclude but he wanted to find the deduct box after all this time?”
“I don’t understand,” Taylor blurted out. “Why would anyone care today where the box is? That’s not a lot of money. Especially if he’s a millionaire.”
“Ah, my young friend, that would be true if all that was in the box was cash.” He folded his hands in his lap.
“There’s something else in the box?” I asked, not quite sure I believed what he was saying.
“Huey believed there was a conspiracy against him—and he was probably right.” Dr. Fleming went on. “The story is that right before he died, he took all the cash from the deduct box and bought state bonds with them. State bonds with the name left blank. Warren Porterie recorded the serial numbers of the bonds in his diary, and so if anyone stole one of the bonds and cashed them, there would be a record of who did it—that was Huey’s fail-safe.” Dr. Fleming smiled. “With compound interest, those bonds would be worth tens of millions today, my friends. Tens of millions of dollars owed to whoever possessed those bonds, owed by the taxpayers of the state of Louisiana.” He smiled. “Huey also kept a lot of damaging information in there, in case he ever needed to strong-arm either friends or enemies. There were rumors he had affidavits on Franklin Roosevelt, evidence of wrongdoing by the president that would not only destroy his political career but could possibly land him in jail.” He shrugged. “All those people are long dead now, of course, so that information would only be of interest to a historian like myself. But the bonds? Whoever had those bonds would have the power to possibly bankrupt the state. And that is not just financial power, but political power.” He grinned at me. “Wouldn’t you think the governor would do just about anything to stop someone from bankrupting Louisiana completely? Our governor has his eyes on a much higher prize than Baton Rouge, you know. Something like this could finish him politically.”
“So, who was the millionaire who gave you money?” It was hard for me not to use the words “bought you.”
“I never actually met the man—he sent an assistant to meet with me.” He said the name.
I froze in my seat, hoping I didn’t give myself away with a facial expression.
I knew the man all too well.
Rev Harper.
I bit my lower lip. Barney was still talking, but I was only vaguely aware of what he was saying. A chill when through my body, and I flashed back to a memory—
—
I was strapped to Colin’s back, and we swung out and away from the building, and the stars and the night sky over my head rotated as we dropped, and I felt my stomach jump into my throat as we dropped through space. Then we were moving back toward the building and I closed my eyes. There was a thud as Colin’s feet hit against the side of the building—Jax Brewery, that’s where we were, he was rescuing me and I’d been drugged, my mind was only vaguely aware of what was going on, and with my eyes closed I could hear the traffic on Decatur Street and a band playing somewhere in the distance, and as Colin pushed off from the building yet again I heard the sound of the nylon rope zipping through the pulley he was controlling, and we were dropping again, and I realized it was better to have my eyes open—
“Scotty?”
I shook my head and came back to the present. “I’m sorry.” Barney and Taylor were both staring at me. “So, it was Harper’s men who did this to you?”
Barney gave me a funny look, but he nodded. “They wanted my notes—they took everything. I wasn’t moving fast enough for Harper, so he decided to go after the diary himself.” He wrung his hands. “So you can understand why I don’t want the police involved. It would really look bad for me at the university, and—really, there wasn’t any harm done, was there?” He gave me a phony smile.
“But if we hadn’t shown up when we did, you could have—”
Fleming cut Taylor off abruptly. “I told you, they were starting to question me—there’s no telling what would have happened, but we heard your car pull up. They gagged me and went out the back door when you knocked on the front door.”
“But what if they come back?”
“They got what they came for.” Fleming stood up. “For what good it will do them. If I couldn’t figure out where the diary was, they don’t have a chance. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to lie down for a while.”
I nodded at Taylor, and we both stood. “You’re sure…”
“Positive.”
“Come on, Taylor.” I shook Fleming’s hand. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Fleming.”
“He was lying, wasn’t he?” Taylor said once we were back in the car.
I was impressed. I hadn’t believed a word of what Fleming had said about getting tied up either. “Why do you say that?” I said, putting the keys in the ignition.
Taylor rolled his blue eyes dramatically. “Someone breaks into your house, ties you up, and threatens to torture you if you don’t talk, but you don’t want to call the police?” His eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose. “I call bullshit on that. Bullshit.” He shrugged. “And then wants to be left alone in the house and isn’t worried about them coming back? Uh-uh. No sense at all.” He buckled his seat belt. “So, who is this Rev Harper person?”
“No one, really.”
“I’m not blind, Scotty—I saw how you reacted when he said the name.”
“He’s a millionaire—made his money in oil, I think.” I put both hands on the steering wheel. “He’s a little on the unsavory side, and he’s not above bending the law to get what he wants.”
To say the least
,
I said to myself.
When I’d first met Rev Harper, I was tied to a chair, much as Fleming was when we found him. I was investigating the murder of a tabloid reporter whose body I’d actually stumbled over—maybe it does happen a lot more than I was willing to admit—and I’d gotten my friend David to give me a ride to follow a lead. Harper’s men had followed us, forced off the highway, and pretty much caused us to have an accident. Within minutes, they’d whisked me out of David’s car and into the trunk of theirs. That time, Harper was looking for the death mask of Napoleon, which had disappeared during the Cabildo fire in 1988. He’d drugged me with sodium pentothal to make sure I was telling the truth. Once he was satisfied that I didn’t know where the death mask was, his men had locked me into a bedroom in his penthouse on top of Jax Brewery. Colin had rescued me while I was still stoned from the drug, and despite my fear of heights, had strapped me to his back and scaled down the side of the building.
I still had nightmares about that. Call it post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Wow.” Taylor’s eyes had widened again. “You live a pretty exciting life, don’t you?”
“I don’t know that I would call it
exciting
,” I observed. “I would say it’s not average, that’s for sure. Although there have been times when I’ve wished for something a little more normal and boring.” I grinned at him. “But boring and normal’s not all it’s cracked up to be, you know?”
“Yeah.” He frowned. “Dr. Fleming didn’t seem all that upset that Harper’s men took his notes.”
“Well, my guess is he has another set.” I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. “But didn’t you think it was weird how neat and tidy his house was? I mean, other than the crap on his dining room table.”
Taylor thought for a moment, and then smiled at me. “No signs of a struggle.”
“Very astute of you.” I smiled at him as I started the ignition. “So, he either didn’t resist or try to get away from them, or they had other methods of persuading him to let them tie him up.”
The one thing I didn’t understand, though, was
why
put on such a show for us?
He couldn’t have known we were stopping by.
I pulled away from the curb, drove two blocks, then turned right and swung back around, heading back to Octavia Street, where I turned right again and parked right before the corner at Constance. I turned off the engine and turned to look through the passenger window.
“What are we doing?” Taylor looked out his window, following my gaze.
“We’re going to watch the good doctor’s house for a little while—not long, I promise.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I have a hunch.” I turned in the seat so I was looking right at him. “He seemed to be in a hurry to get rid of us—which is also suspicious. So we’ll just sit here for a while and see if he is up to anything. We’ll give it no more than ten minutes.”
I set the stopwatch function on my phone and propped it up on the dashboard of the truck. A car drove by. A pair of sweat-drenched joggers ran past. It was starting to get hot inside the Explorer, so I turned the key to accessory to get some cold air moving.
The stopwatch beeped, and I was just about to ask Taylor if he thought we should give it another couple of minutes when the front door of Fleming’s house opened. Fleming stepped out with a backpack slung over his left shoulder. He locked the door, got into the Cavalier, and started the engine. The tires squealed loudly as he pulled away from the curb.
“Here we go,” I said, starting the SUV and slipping it into gear. I went around the corner and caught sight of his car about a block ahead of us. He turned on his signal when he reached the stop sign at Magazine Street. I pulled over to the curb, not wanting to come up behind him at the corner—the SUV was too big not to notice. He turned onto Magazine and I swung out again, flooring it and driving too fast. I hoped I wouldn’t lose him on Magazine—it was a narrow, two-lane business street, and traffic was a nightmare under the best of circumstances. I stopped at the corner and looked to the right. He was stopped at the light at Jefferson. I had to wait for a few moments before I could turn, but I could see him clearly as he went through the intersection when the light changed and continued downtown on Magazine.
I’ve been a passenger with Colin and Frank enough times when they
were following someone to figure out what I was doing. The key was to never lose sight of him while keeping enough distance between us so he didn’t notice us behind him. I kept three cars between us, figuring that was good enough on the narrow street. He turned on his left turn signal when he got to the intersection at Napoleon. The oncoming lane was clear, so I turned left onto a one-way side street and headed up a couple of blocks before turning right again and heading toward Napoleon. I reached the stop sign just in time to see the red Cavalier drive past, away from the river. I had to wait for another couple of cars to go by before I could pull out to the neutral ground and make a left onto Napoleon. Napoleon was under construction between Prytania and St. Charles and narrowed to only one lane. I could see him ahead of us, three cars back from the red light. There were a couple of cars in between us, but I could easily lose him when the traffic merged when the light changed. I couldn’t see if his signal was on. I cursed under my breath and hung a sharp right.
“What are you doing?” Taylor asked, surprised.
“I don’t want to lose him—” I swore again as the SUV bumped over potholes on the side street. I turned left and drove up to Prytania and shot across the street, right in front of a gray Lexus, which slammed on its brakes and blared its horn at us.
When I got to St. Charles, I could see the light was red at Napoleon, so I drove across to the neutral ground and didn’t slow, almost going up on two wheels as I turned left. I swung into the right turn lane and got to Napoleon in time to see the Cavalier heading toward Claiborne, still on Napoleon. The light finally changed, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I turned to follow him. There were about four or five cars between us now.
I relaxed.
“Where do you think he’s going?” Taylor whispered.
“You don’t have to whisper—he can’t hear you,” I said, suppressing a grin as his face turned red. “I’m hoping he’s going to meet whomever he’s either working for or with. Maybe we can figure out what he’s up to once we know who that is.” What I was really hoping was wherever it was he was leading us, was where they were keeping Dad.
But I didn’t believe for a minute that Harper had Dad—that wasn’t his style. Sure, he’d kidnapped and drugged me to find out what I knew all those years ago, but kidnapping Dad and holding him hostage was not his style. Harper was more direct—he didn’t play Machiavellian games like that.
No, I didn’t doubt Harper was looking for the deduct box for reasons of his own, but Dad’s kidnapping was the work of someone else.
Which meant there were two opposing groups looking for the deduct box.
And us.
“Call Frank, let him know what we’re doing, and find out what’s going on around my mom’s—see if the kidnappers have called since we left,” I instructed, keeping my eyes on the back of the Cavalier as it continued toward Claiborne Avenue. I heard Taylor talking in a low voice.
Even though I was confident I was right that Harper wasn’t behind Dad’s kidnapping, I wasn’t happy to know he was involved in any way in whatever it was that was going on. The big Texan firmly believed his wealth and power put him above the law and he was justified in doing whatever it took to get what he wanted. But Harper seemed to have a grudging respect for me. I had kept him from getting his hands on the death mask, but he’d given me the fifty-thousand-dollar reward he’d put up for its discovery since I had in fact found it.
No, Harper was more likely to deal with me directly than grab Dad.
The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Whoever had kidnapped Dad seemed to think we either had the deduct box or knew where it was. The only way we could possibly know that was if Veronica had somehow known where it was and passed the information on to Mom. And unless Mom wasn’t telling us everything, she didn’t know either. The kidnappers were wrong.
I also wasn’t sure if Fleming had lied about the bonds—it just seemed really weird to me that the state government would have issued what were essentially bearer bonds against state funds, even if Huey Long had wanted it to. None of that made sense. The Huey Long legacy website had been pretty clear that he’d always kept the money as cash, so why on earth would he have done something so out of character? No, Fleming
must
have been lying about that. He might be an expert on Long, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t a liar.
There had to be something else, more than the money, in that box that everyone wanted.
Fleming turned right onto Claiborne and headed downtown.
I bit my lower lip as I turned to follow him.
I didn’t like having Taylor along with me. He was just a kid, and there was no telling how this might end up. But there was no way I could just dump him on the side of the road either. There was nothing to do but keep following Fleming and hope things didn’t take a turn for the worse.
This is why I can’t be a parent—why kids shouldn’t be around me. I get into too much trouble, and I’d put the kid at risk. Frank will never forgive me if anything happens to Taylor. I shouldn’t have brought him with me. I should have known this would turn into more than just a talk with Fleming. But if he can lead us to Dad—isn’t it worth the risk?
Yeah, GREAT parenting skills there, Scotty.
I got even more nervous after we passed through the intersection at Martin Luther King and he got into the lane for the on-ramp to cross the river bridge.
“Fuck it,” I told myself, following him up the long ramp onto 90 West. Traffic wasn’t as heavy as I’d thought it would be, but it was also still early in the day—during rush-hour traffic would come to a horrible stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper halt. I still didn’t think he’d noticed us following him, and I saw out of the corner of my eye that Taylor wasn’t on his phone anymore and was just holding it loosely in his left hand. “What did Frank say?” I asked as we made the steady climb to cross the river.
“They haven’t heard from the kidnappers,” he replied. “But my mother called.”
“Is that good or bad?” I asked as we went over the high point of the bridge and started down the other side to the West Bank. “What did she have to say?”
“She wants me to call her to let her know I’m all right.” He made a face. “She wants to hear my voice. Well,
fuck
her!”
I glanced over as I braked to slow us down—the downward slope had gotten us to about ninety miles per hour. The Cavalier continued ahead of us on 90, going around the big turn at the bottom of the incline but not getting off at Charles de Gaulle Boulevard. In that quick glance I could see his lip was quivering and his eyes were filled with tears.
“Taylor, it’s okay to be angry with your mother, but she’s still your mother,” I said, trying to keep my voice as soothing and consoling as I could. “You’re going to have to talk to her sometime. I know—I can’t imagine what it must be like to be so completely rejected by your parents, but your mom is doing the best she can, you know?”
He nodded, wiping at his eyes.
I didn’t like sticking up for his mother—frankly, I thought she deserved to be boiled in oil—but saying that wasn’t going to make him feel any better.
“You don’t have to decide now anyway,” I went on, turning my attention back to the highway and frowning. I didn’t see the Cavalier anywhere—had he somehow gotten off the highway when I wasn’t looking? “Do you see him?”
“He’s in front of the eighteen-wheeler,” Taylor said, his voice hushed and a little shaky. “That’s why you can’t see him—oh, look—there he goes! He’s taking that exit!”
Sure enough, Fleming was getting onto the Belle Chasse Highway.
Where the hell is he going?
I wondered as I followed him through Belle Chasse and stayed back as he started driving along the river levee.
I stayed back as far as I could. There were no longer any cars between us, and I had to hope he hadn’t noticed us following him before.
Where is he going?
Farther and farther we drove; it became clearer we were heading into the marshes that eventually became the coastal wetlands.
“Do you know where we are?” Taylor asked.
“No, not really,” I replied nervously, without taking my eyes off the back of the Cavalier.
Finally, after it seemed like we’d been driving long enough to be out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, he made a left turn and drove along a dirt road.
I hesitated for just a moment before following.
After about another ten minutes, he pulled off the road into a dirt parking lot and drove around behind a building made of rusty corrugated steel with a tin roof. All around us was marsh and water and towering live oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. I stopped on the road and let the truck idle for a while.