Authors: John Connolly
T
HE
F
ONTENOT COMPOUND
lay five miles east of Delacroix. It was approached via a raised private road, newly built, which wound through swamps and decaying trees until it reached an area that had been cleared of all vegetation and was now only dark earth. High fencing, topped with razor wire, enclosed two or three acres, at the center of which lay a low, single-story, horseshoe-shaped concrete building. A black convertible and three black Explorers were parked in a line in the concrete lot created by the arms of the building. To the rear was an older house, a standard single-story wooden dwelling with a porch and what looked like a series of parallel linked rooms. No one seemed to be around as I pulled the rented Taurus up to the compound gate, Louis in the passenger seat beside me. Rachel had taken the other rental with her on a final visit to Loyola University.
“Maybe we should have called ahead,” I said as I looked at the silent compound.
Beside me, Louis raised his hands slowly above his head and gestured in front of him with his chin. Two men, dressed in jeans and faded shirts, stood before us pointing Heckler & Koch HK53s with retracted stocks. I caught two more in the rearview mirror and a fifth, wearing an axe in his belt, opposite the passenger window. They were hard, weathered-looking men, some of them with beards already tinged with gray. Their boots were muddy and their hands were the hands of manual laborers, scarred in places.
I watched as a man of medium height, dressed in a blue denim shirt, jeans, and work boots, walked toward the gate from the main compound building. When he reached the gate he didn’t open it but stood watching us through the fencing. He had been burned at some point: the skin on the right of his face was heavily scarred, the right eye useless, and the hair hadn’t grown back on that side of his scalp. A fold of skin hung over his dead eye, and when he spoke, he did so out of the left side of his mouth.
“What you want here?” The voice was heavily accented: Cajun stock.
“My name’s Charlie Parker,” I replied through the open window. “I’m here to see Lionel Fontenot.”
“Who this?” He motioned at Louis with a finger.
“Count Basie,” I said. “The rest of the band couldn’t make it.”
Pretty Boy didn’t crack a smile, or even a half smile. “Lionel don’t see no one. Get yo’ ass outta here ’fo you get hurt.” He turned and walked back toward the compound.
“Hey,” I said. “You accounted for all of Joe Bones’s goons at Metairie yet?”
He stopped and turned back to us.
“What you say?” He looked like I’d just insulted his sister.
“I figure you have two bodies at Metairie that no one can account for. If there’s a prize, I’d like to claim it.”
He seemed to consider this for a moment, then: “You a joker? You are, I don’t think you funny.”
“You don’t think I’m funny?” I said. There was an edge to my voice now. His left eyelid flickered and an H&K ended up two inches from my nose. It smelled like it had been used recently. “Try this for funny: I’m the guy who hauled Lutice Fontenot from the bottom of Honey Island swamp. You want to tell Lionel that, see if he laughs?”
He didn’t reply, but pointed an infrared signaler at the compound gate. It opened almost noiselessly.
“Get outta the car,” he said. Two of the men kept our hands in view and their guns trained on us as we opened the car doors, then two others came forward and frisked us against the car, looking for wires and weapons. They handed Louis’s SIG and knife and my S&W to the scarred guy, then checked the interior of the car for concealed weapons. They opened the hood and trunk and checked under the car.
“Man, you like the Peace Corps,” whispered Louis. “Make friends wherever you go.”
“Thanks,” I replied. “It’s a gift.”
When they were satisfied that it was clean, we were allowed to drive slowly up to the compound with one of Fontenot’s men, the axe man, in the back. Two men walked alongside the car. We parked beside the jeeps and were escorted up to the older house.
On the porch, waiting for us with a china cup of coffee in his hand, was Lionel Fontenot. The burn victim went up to him and spoke a few words in his ear, but Lionel stopped him with a raised hand and turned the hard stare on us. I felt a raindrop fall on my head and within seconds we were standing in a downpour. Lionel left us in the rain. I was wearing my blue linen Liz Claiborne suit and a white shirt with a blue silk-knit tie. I wondered if the dye would run. The rain was heavy and the dirt around the house was already turning to mud when Lionel ordered his men to leave, took a seat on the porch, and indicated with a nod of his head that we should come up. We sat on a pair of wooden chairs with woven seats while Lionel took a wooden recliner. The burn victim stood behind us. Louis and I moved our chairs slightly as we sat so that we could keep him in view.
An elderly black maid, with a face that I recognized from the Metairie funeral party, emerged from the house with a silver coffeepot and sugar and cream in a matching set, all on an ornate silver tray. There were three china cups and saucers on the tray. Multicolored birds chased one another’s tails around the rim of the cups, and a heavy silver spoon with a sailing ship at the end lay neatly positioned beneath the handle of each one. The maid placed the tray on a small wicker table and then left us.
Lionel Fontenot was wearing a pair of black cotton pants and a white shirt with an open collar. A matching black jacket lay over the back of his chair and his brogues were newly polished. He leaned over the table and poured three cups of coffee, added two sugars to one, and then handed it wordlessly to the burn victim.
“Cream and sugar?” he asked, looking to Louis and me in turn.
“Black’s fine,” I said.
“Likewise,” said Louis.
Lionel handed us each a cup. It was all very polite. Above us, the rain hammered on the porch roof.
“You want to tell me how you came to be looking for my sister?” Lionel said at last. He looked like someone who finds a strange guy cleaning the windshield of his car and can’t decide whether to tip him a buck or hit him with a tire iron. He held his cup with his little finger cocked while he sipped his coffee. I noticed that the burn victim did the same.
I told Lionel some of what I knew then. I told him about
Tante
Marie’s visions and her death and about the stories of the ghost of a girl at a Honey Island slough. “I think the man who killed your sister killed
Tante
Marie Aguillard and her son. He also killed my wife and my little girl,” I said. “That’s how I came to be looking for your sister.”
I didn’t say that I was sorry for his pain. He probably knew that anyway. If he didn’t, then it wasn’t worth saying.
“You take out two men at Metairie?”
“One,” I answered. “Someone else killed the other.”
Lionel turned to Louis. “You?”
Louis didn’t reply.
“Someone else,” I repeated.
Lionel put his cup down and spread his hands. “So why are you here now? You want my gratitude? I’m going to New Orleans now to take away my sister’s body. I don’t know that I want to thank you for that.” He turned his face away. There was pain in his eyes, but no tears. Lionel Fontenot didn’t look like a man with well-developed tear ducts.
“That’s not why I’m here,” I said quietly. “I want to know why Lutice was reported missing only in the last three months. I want to know what your brother was doing out at Honey Island on the night he was killed.”
“My brother,” he said. Love and frustration and guilt chased one another in his voice like the birds on his pretty cups. Then he seemed to catch himself. I think he was about to tell me to go to hell, to keep out of his family’s business if I wanted to stay alive, but I held his gaze and for a while he said nothing.
“I got no reason to trust you,” he said.
“I can find the man who did this,” I said. My voice was low and even. Lionel nodded, more to himself than to me, and appeared to make his decision.
“My sister left at the end of January, start of February,” he began. “She didn’t like”—he waved his left hand gently at the compound—“all this. There was trouble with Joe Bones, some people got hurt.” He paused and chose his next words carefully. “One day she closed her bank account, packed a bag, and left a note. She didn’t tell us to our faces. David wouldn’t have let her leave anyways.
“We tried to trace her. We looked up friends in the city, even people she knew in Seattle and Florida. There was nothing, not a trace. David was real cut up about her. She was our half sister. When my momma died, my father married again. Lutice came out of that marriage. When my father and her momma died—that was in nineteen eighty-three, in an automobile accident—we took care of her, David especially. They were real close.
“Few months back, David started having dreams about Lutice. He didn’t say nothing at first, but he got thinner and paler and his nerves started to play at him. When he told me, I thought he was going crazy and told him so, but the dreams just kept comin’. He dreamed of her underwater, he said, heard her banging against metal in the night. He was sure that something had happened to her.
“But what could we do? We had searched half of Louisiana. I’d even made approaches to some of Joe Bones’s men, to see if there was something that maybe needed to be sorted out. There was nothing. She was gone.
“Next thing I knew, he reported her missing and we had the cops crawling over the compound. Mon, I nearly killed him that day, but he insisted. He said something had happened to Lutice. He was beyond reason by then, and I had to take care of things on my own, with Joe Bones hangin’ over me like a sword ’bout to fall.”
He looked to the burn victim.
“Leon here was with him when the call came. He wouldn’t say nothin’ about where he was goin’, just took off in his damned yellow car. When Leon tried to stop him, he pulled a gun on him.” I glanced at Leon. If he felt any guilt about what had happened to David Fontenot, he kept it well hidden.
“Any idea who made the call?” I asked.
Lionel shook his head.
I put my cup on the tray. The coffee was cold and untasted.
“When are you going to hit Joe Bones?” I asked. Lionel blinked like he had just been slapped, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Leon step forward.
“The hell you talkin’ about?” said Lionel.
“You’ve got a second funeral coming up, at least as soon as the police release your sister’s body. Either you won’t have too many mourners or the funeral will be overrun with police and media. Whatever happens, I figure you’ll try to take out Joe Bones before then, probably at his place in West Feliciana. You owe him for David, and anyway, Joe won’t rest easy until you’re dead. One of you will try to finish it.”
Lionel looked at Leon. “They clean?” Leon nodded.
Lionel leaned forward. There was menace in his voice. “The fuck does any of this have to do with you?”
I wasn’t fazed by him. The threat of violence was in his face, but I needed Lionel Fontenot.
“You heard about Tony Remarr’s death?”
Lionel nodded.
“Remarr was killed because he was out at the Aguillard place after
Tante
Marie and her son were murdered,” I explained. “His fingerprints were found in
Tante
Marie’s blood, Joe Bones heard about it, and told Remarr to lie low. But the killer found out—I don’t know how yet—and I think he used your brother to lure Remarr into making the hit so he could take him out. I want to know what Remarr told Joe Bones.”
Lionel considered what I had said. “And you can’t get to Joe Bones without me.”
Beside me, Louis’s mouth twitched. Lionel caught the movement.
“That’s not entirely true,” I said. “But if you’re going to be calling on him anyway, we might tag along.”
“I go calling on Joe Bones, his fucking place is gonna be real fucking quiet by the time I leave,” said Lionel softly.
“You do what you have to do,” I replied. “But I need Joe Bones alive. For a while.”
Lionel stood and buttoned the top of his shirt. He took a wide black silk tie from the inside pocket of his jacket and began to put it on, using his reflection in the window to check the knot.
“Where you staying?” he asked. I told him, and gave Leon the number of my phone. “We’ll be in touch,” said Lionel. “Maybe. Don’t come out here again.”
Our discussions appeared to be at an end. Louis and I were almost at the car when Lionel spoke again. He pulled on his jacket and adjusted the collar, then smoothed down the lapels.
“One thing,” he said. “I know Morphy out of St. Martin was there when Lutice was found. You got cop friends?”
“Yeah. I got federal friends too. That a problem?”
He turned away. “Not as long as you don’t make it one. If you do, the crabs gonna be feeding on you and your buddy.”
Louis fooled around with the car radio until he found a station that seemed to be playing back-to-back Dr. John. “This is music, right?” he said.
The music segued uneasily from “Makin’ Whoopee” to “Gris Gris Gumbo Ya-Ya” and John’s throaty rumble filled the car. Louis flicked the presets again, until he found a country station playing three in a row from Garth Brooks.
“This be the devil’s music,” mumbled Louis. He turned the radio off and tapped his fingers on the dash.
“You know,” I said, “you don’t have to hang around if you don’t want to. Things could get difficult, or Woolrich and the feds could decide to make them difficult for you.” I knew that Louis was what Angel diplomatically referred to as semiretired. Money, it appeared, was no longer an issue. The “semi” indicated that it might have been replaced by something else, although I wasn’t sure yet what that was.
He looked out the window, not at me. “You know why we’re here?”
“Not entirely. I asked, but I wasn’t sure that you’d come.”
“We came because we owe you, because you’d look out for us if we needed it, and because someone has to look out for you after what happened to your woman and your little girl. More than that, Angel thinks that you’re a good man. Maybe I think so too and maybe I think that what you brought to an end with the Modine bitch, what you’re trying to bring to an end here, they’re things that should be brought to an end. You understand me?”