Bayou Brigade (11 page)

“You killed him!” cried Orial, scooping the dead canine in her arms.

“Naw,” said Merriott, “some alligator, probly.”

“Shut up, girl,” called Baal, as he turned his attention to the Indian, drunk and bleary-eyed, hunched over his wooden rocker.

Laser Orange, a Vietnamese speed freak and weapons specialist, said nothing, but covered them with a Beretta machine gun.

“Time for salvation, old-timer,” said Baal, slapping Telemacques on the back of the head.

“Don’t hurt him!” Orial raced over to Baal and flung the decayed animal in his face.

“Get this bitch away from me, Merriott!” Baal wiped bits of hair and flesh off his khaki uniform.

Merriott yanked the girl back with unnecessary force,

reaching at her throat and slowly strangling her. Telemacques heard his daughter’s gasps for breath and stood, facing Baal.

“You have a problem, Baal?” he said feebly.

“We saw you talking to the newsman, Jacques,” Baal sneered. “We’re gonna teach you a lesson for doing that.” “Get off my land,”
Telemacques said firmly.

Baal smiled. “No, little man. This is
my
property now.” He walked to Orial, grabbing her face and pinching her lips. “This is a very pretty girl, Jacques.” He punched
her in the mouth.

Orial fell backward, reeling as blood squirted from her nose. Dazed, she lay unmoving on a flower-print sofa.

Laser Orange threw his gun aside and hopped over the sofa and on top of Orial, pulling at her hair and successfully removing
her panties and nightshirt. Then he unbuckled his trousers and raped her.

Telemacques cried and scratched at Baal, who held him down while Laser had his fun. Then it was Merriott’s turn, and he flipped
the half-unconscious girl on her stomach, causing her to yell in tormented pain. Merriott had no mercy, going at her for fifteen
minutes. Then the two men held her on the floor and gang-banged the teenager until she passed out completely, bleeding and
barely breathing. Laser tittered and waved his gun around.

“Had enough punishment, old man?” Merriott said, wiping the drool off his chin.

Baal looked the Acadian in the eye with a steely sardonic grin. “Your life is meaningless now, Jacques. The girl is mine.
You are all alone.”

Tears streamed from Telemacques’s drunken, half-closed eyes. “She is my daughter. Why have you done this terrible thing?”

“You caused trouble, my friend.” Baal raised his gun to Telemacques’s head.

“You said you would leave us alone. You never leave us alone! I cannot stand you people anymore, so I tell them all about
you.”

“Take a good look, Jacques.” Baal wheeled the old man in front of a framed mirror adorning the wall.

Telemacques saw Baal pull the trigger and witnessed the top of his own head dissolve into mush. Baal fired twice to insure
the man was dead.

Laser Orange hoisted the girl over his shoulder and strode past Merriott. “We take the girl,”Laser said in thick, accented
English. Baal nodded in approval.

“Maybe the jail guard can have fun with her,”said Merriott, retrieving Laser’s machine gun, following Baal into the night
air. Before leaving for camp, they doused the home with gasoline from a cannister in Telemacques’s tool shed and watched it
burn to the ground.

Merriott made a sign of the cross on his chest. “We’ll see’m in hell, sir.”

Baal just laughed.

Steve Workman lived and worked in a penthouse suite in the Garden District of New Orleans. By vocation he was an importer
of fine clothing. His shop on Basin Street, sequestered in famed Storyville, specialized in catering to the rich, with a full
selection of patterns, silks, and colors. His television ads swept the metroplitan area, and the newspaper spreads always
produced healthy business.

He was also the ringleader in a world-wide opium trade and gun-running racket. But his operation was so clean the cops and
G-men could never gather enough evidence to bring him to court. Informants who said they’d squeal either clammed up under
pressure from Workman’s cadre of Enforcers, or took a plunge in the muddy Mississippi.

Security men guarded his office building like Fort Knox, and no one got up to the fifth floor without a thorough shakedown
and appointment confirmation.

Ben Slayton had something else in mind, however.

His rented car parked three blocks away, he stayed away from the front entrance and Workman’s bullies. In the rear, the service
elevator was left unattended while two Enforcers grabbed a bite to eat across the street at a Burger King. Slayton had played
the waiting game huddled behind nearby shrubs until the two disappeared into the restaurant. Prying off the elevator ceiling
plate with his pocketknife blade, he entered the dark shaft and settled down until someone took a ride to the top floor.

Ten minutes later the two Enforcers returned, one of them stepping into the elevator. “I’m going to check out the fourth level,”
he said.

“Get back right away,” the other called out. “Mr. Workman is due to arrive at three-thirty, and he’ll want to see us.”

“I’ll be down in a minute,” came the reply, spoken through a mouthful of french fries.

Both men had New Jersey accents. Workman’s pay scale attracted all varieties of hoods, ex-cons looking for dirty work, and
strung-out war vets. A security force clad in expensive three-piece suits was no small expense these days.

The elevator lurched upward, pushing close to the doors to Workman’s suite before crawling to a halt at the fourth floor.
While the Enforcer made his rounds, Slayton climbed up to the next level and, legs dangling two feet away from the cab, forced
the doors to open.

It was a spacious office. Shag carpet and a sunken indoor pool ran the length of the room nearest to sliding glass doors which
led to a sun deck and helicopter landing pad. And while even Slayton envied Workman’s expensive, rich Mediterranean decor,
there were a few chintzy Picasso forgeries in the wall, and the water bed and ceiling mirror were Sears, Roebuck catalog items.

The office was deserted, which gave Slayton an opportunity to research Workman’s business files. Most of the cabinets and
drawers were locked, but with expert precision, using a few customized additions to his pocket-knife, he forced open the lock
and removed what he wanted.

The file folder was marked SHIPMENTS. Two xeroxed sheets contained the following information:

POND 2   Memo dtd 2/12

Axel Trucking, Baton Rouge

Deliver to Box 110, Morgan City

Signed Jacques Telemacques

All SAM7 re-routed from Chicago 2/11 to POND 2

Warehouses full. Delivery confirmed. Await

memo from Bathurst.

The second sheet was a carbon copy. Since there had been no weapons in Chicago, Slayton guessed that “Pond 1” (or Chicago)
was some kind of intermediate shipping terminal—he recalled Howard saying that
he never handled the merchandise.
The plan was good if the shipments received in New Orleans, Washington, or the West Coast were sent to Chicago, loaded onto
a second carrier, and then trucked to the final destination. How did they cover the paper work, though? Bills of lading had
to be drawn up, authorized, and signed for at delivery.

A further investigation into the file uncovered a list of pay-off receipts:

Axel Trucking, Baton Rouge

Bill #3211-B

$200.00 no delay

Standard Lines, New Orleans

Bill #ZC000789

       #ZD217700    $3,000.00

       #ZD234577    10 days late

Barringer Express, Chicago

Bill #562-15

$257.00 / 2 days late

Axel, Standard, and Barringer were the only companies paid by Workman to transport the goods.

Slayton detected the elevator humming its way up from the lower floors. Stuffing the receipts into his pocket and stashing
the folder back in its drawer, he dived out of sight just as Workman and a bodyguard entered the office.

“Wait for me downstairs while I shower, Paul,” Workman said, “and send Miss Vicki up as soon as she arrives.” Paul left the
room.

Workman had been in the Marines during Vietnam, riding shotgun in an artillery tank. His big moment came when, after saving
thirty men from a nest of snipers, he was awarded a medal for bravery and sent home a hero. His father, a good old boy from
Knoxville, Tennessee, who owned a string of textile plants in every state in the South, gave his son an expensive present,
a clothing store acquired in a foreclosure. Workman had determination and shrewdness, with an eye toward profits, and within
five years gained statewide recognition as the most ruthless, cunning businessman in New Orleans. With the steady drug trade
paying the bills, the store’s take amounted to extra gravy. The new gun-smuggling scheme brought in a nice chunk of the pie,
too.

In a fit of confusion, and because the office - was so spacious, Slayton had nowhere to hide but in the bathroom, an ambush
point that brought him a flash of
deja vu.

Removing shoes and clothing, Workman dawdled around his office, gazed out a window overlooking the city he wished to conquer,
skimmed through his subscription copy of
Hustler,
and chugged a quick snort of whisky. A minute later, he pulled back the shower curtain. Slayton lashed out with his fist,
stunning the wealthy tycoon. Workman had no time to react. Slayton drove an arm under his chin, compressing his windpipe;
Workman couldn’t breathe. He lost consciousness quickly. When he opened his eyes, Slayton had him hogtied on the bed, sitting
in contact with the bedpost.

“What the fuck?” he called out.

Slayton poured himself a shot of Black Russian and settled into the comfy Windsor chair, an arm’s length away. “Mr. Workman,
I presume?”

“I don’t get it. ’S this a shakedown?”

“Do you know what an S-A-M-7 is?”

Workman grew calm. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about. Get me outta this!”

“I found the rope in a trunk filled with all sorts of kinky devices. You’re quite a man of the world, aren’t you?”

“All right, bimbo, what’s your plan?”

Slayton opened a medium-sized foot locker pushed against the bed, withdrawing a large pink dildo. “This device is amazing.
It does all the work!”

“That’s fuckin’ invasion of privacy!”

This ignorant slob was a businessman? “Behave yourself, or I’ll get annoyed with you.”

“Fuck you, asshole. How did you get in?”

“I asked you about SAM7s.”

A smile split across Workman’s face. “Okay, untie me, and I’ll talk.”

“No deal.”

“Well, I never heard of no goddam SAM7.”

“Ever heard of Howard Westphal?”

“He’s dead, man.”

“You want to know why he’s dead?”

“Not really.”

“Boy, he wouldn’t tell me anything I wanted to hear.” Slayton figured the tough-guy routine was all Workman understood.

“Wha-wha-what are you talking about?”

The bottle of Black Russian was handy, and Slayton poured it all over Workman’s head. “Where’s Bathurst?”

“Who? What are you doin’?” He spit out liquor and tried to wrestle the bonds loose.

“Where is he?” Slayton lit a match, holding it close to Workman’s doused hair.

“No! NO! I’ll tell, I’ll tell you anything. Don’t do it, blow it out!”

Drawing the match away, Slayton said, “I’m waiting.” “They’ll kill me if I say anything.”

“Hell, pal,
I’ll
kill you if you don’t.”

Someone in the outer office moved. Slayton dived under the chair and extricated his revolver. It was Paul, the bodyguard.

He had a piece drawn, but didn’t see Slayton crouched on the floor. “I heard talking,” he said.

“He has a gun, Paul,” Workman cried.

Slayton took a pot shot out the bathroom door. As Paul ran for cover, Slayton dived across the bed at Workman and pressed
the Smith & Wesson to his head.

Being the coward Slayton suspected, Workman called after Paul, “Hold it, don’t come in, there’s a rod against my head. This
dude’s crazy enough to shoot.”

Slayton sounded threatening. “Fuckin’ A, Paul, why don’t you simply throw down your weapon and join us?”

Like an obedient puppy, Paul held his arms high, and Slayton took his little snub-nose pistol. He had them both on the bed
when three more Enforcers plowed into the outer office. Slayton had three guns: Workman’s, Paul’s and his own; he barreled
into the office, blasting away.

The first shot took one man in the chest; he was out of the race, stumbling over his feet and crashing into a bookshelf behind
him. Bullets whizzed past Slayton’s head as he got two more shots into the second Enforcer and jumped behind the maple desk.
The third man, shielded by an abstract stone sculpture, wasted cartridges indiscriminately. One shattered a mirror over the
bar; two more punctured the desk.

Slayton caught Paul’s movement from the bed and fired, killing Workman in the process. With the hostage spent and twitching
in a pool of blood, Slayton had to escape. Paul bought a slug in the head.

The third Enforcer made a break for it, and one shot drilled him in the shoulder. He wouldn’t be any more trouble, thought
Slayton, taking the gun from his hand. The shooting had attracted the attention of other security thugs, and the elevator
doors fell shut, returning to the ground floor to carry them up. That gave Slayton some time to get away.

Using another length of rope found in Workman’s foot locker, Slayton climbed down the opposite side of the building, letting
go ten feet above ground and hurrying to the car. Well ahead of the henchmen on the penthouse patio, he sped out of sight.
Opening his breast pocket, he looked over the receipts purloined from Workman’s files and headed into town.

It was Tuesday, April 10.

The late morning shower refreshed Wilma. Rubbing wet hair with a towel, she circled the hotel room in search of some underwear.
Her eyes settled on an end table where, minutes before, a small porcelain vase had been. On the floor were bits of broken
pottery.

A figure moved in the kitchen. The intruder darted out from behind the curtains and ran at her, raising one hand as if to
slap her.