Highfire Read online

  The Elodie.

  After that runt Squib Moreau’s angel of a momma.

  Surely to Christ that would bring her around.

  Regence knew his own habits well enough to realize that he was on the road to being hung up on that Cajun girl. “Girl”? Hell, she was a full-grown woman, past her sell-by date and with nothing to show for it ’cept that idiot boy of hers, and Hooke counted him a liability rather than an asset.

  Don’t get yourself hung up, son, he told himself. Ain’t nothing but pain at the end of that road.

  But Regence couldn’t control his yearnings, and it wasn’t just a physical thing. Hooke had plenty of slut shacks he dropped in on regular. His interest in Elodie Moreau was more long-term.

  She should count her lucky stars a guy like me is so much as letting my gaze linger, Constable Hooke thought several times a day, which didn’t make him feel one degree less irritated about how his courtship was progressing. He was smart enough to grasp the psychology of the situation, that psychology being he craved what he couldn’t get his mitts on, but knowing the psychology didn’t mitigate his needs none.

  Maybe if she hadn’t shot me down in public that way. Looking down on me like I was some swamp rat come slithering in off the river.

  Regence had been rejected by women before, but he often found that decision reversed when he approached it different, for example at four in the morning in a dark alley. Shit, one time he didn’t even have to say nothing, just whistled a little off-key and cocked his head to one side.

  But Elodie. She had more steel in her than that, the way she stared him down in the Pearl Bar that first time they ran into each other outside the station. Hunched over a mug of coffee, she was still in scrubs after her shift when he came in. Hooke took one look and thought to himself, Elodie is all tuckered out, so mayhaps her defenses are down. So he’d sauntered over and dropped the line, “Morning, sugar. Remember me? The name’s Constable Hooke, and I would surely like to get my hooks into you.”

  Cheesy as all hell, but Regence was unaccustomed to making the effort with his sweet talk. Usually just saying any old words did the trick. But not this time. Elodie lifted her head like it weighed a ton with all the troubles in there. She fixed him with those chocolate eyes and responded a bit louder than necessary in front of the breakfast crowd. And what she said was, “Constable, I spent the night scooping old-man crap out of a hypoallergenic bag, and I would one hundred percent rather spend the rest of my life on this earth doing exactly that than let you get a single hook into me.”

  It was a zinger, no doubt about that. The boys in the Pearl close to split their guts laughing and Regence left with a red neck. Elodie had said nicer things since then, but Regence still felt that burn under his collar.

  Chapter 2

  SQUIB OFTEN FELT HARD DONE BY FORTUNE-WISE. EVERYBODY GOT some luck, a bone tossed their way by Mother Nature. Squib’s boon was common among Cajun folk in that the maringouins had never taken a shine to him. Maybe it was the French blood from way back, but more likely the Caribbean had more to do with the situation. Squib never could fathom how a person could even tolerate the bayou after sunset with the mosquitoes ripping chunks out of their flesh. You see those tourists in the morning wandering around welted like they got themselves tortured. Some Guantanamo-looking shit. Nothing took the cool out of a college calf tattoo like half a dozen septic lumps. Squib got maybe a handful of bites a season, and even then it was usually some zirondelle on a rampage.

  So that was his luck.

  Unblemished skin.

  Hard to turn a fella’s life around on that, less’n he got spotted hanging at the mall by some model scout. And that wasn’t overlikely. Squib didn’t really hang per se. He was a not-enough-hours-in-the-day kind of guy. Always working, making a buck.

  His Cajun skin made setting crawfish traps more comfortable, at least. Squib would motor up the bayou toward Honey Island and float half a dozen of those cages near telltale lily pads, then spend a few hours trawling with a scoop net until his traps were bursting at the wire. In all his years night fishing, Squib had only ever been bit the one time, and then it wasn’t no mosquito but a moccasin that got itself tangled up in a cage. The snake must have been jizzed out, though, because Squib suffered no more than a nub of swelling around the teeth marks.

  Tonight I got bigger fish in my sights, thought Squib, going all melodramatic. A life of crime.

  Squib knew that he was stepping over some kind of threshold and there wouldn’t be no crossing back, but Regence Hooke was a devil in a tasseled cap who had his sights set on Elodie Moreau, so it was up to him to buy them some distance.

  Maybe if we’re living in the middle of a development with plenty of witnesses, then Hooke might settle down some and back off.

  Squib’s warped reasoning was based on a child’s understanding of evil men. He couldn’t know that specimens like Regence Hooke didn’t get settled down; they got riled up.

  The only time Hooke ever settled down was with a blister pack of Benzedrine, a quart of Old Forester’s, and a hooker at the door.

  The skinny on Squib’s prospective boss was as follows: Willard Carnahan, a purveyor of all things legal and illegal. Wasn’t nothing beneath Carnahan, not so far as Squib knew. There was a story doing the grapevine that Willard had beat a corner-slinger into a coma recently in the French Quarter over a zip of coke that was actually baby powder and turned to rock in his nostrils, so Carnahan wasn’t ever crossing the Twin Span again, on account of the retribution that was waiting for him in New Orleans from the hustler’s higher-ups. Willard was a swamp sailor: He could navigate the Pearl River without ever once skimming a bank. He worked a tour boat during the day and at nighttime ran his own deals through the tiny feeder tribs—even with his eyes closed, if needs be. Carnahan had his own distillery, which was perfectly legal so long as a fella didn’t use it to manufacture white lightning. The official story was that Carnahan was distilling water, but in fact he was engaged in the age-old practice of running ’shine for the alcohol-blind swamp dogs on the bayou. The sheriff’s office in Slidell took their payoffs in a jug, and nobody else gave much of a crap. But those jugs were heavy, and Squib reckoned that Carnahan could use a humper who knew the swamp almost as well as he did.

  They had arranged a late meet on the old Honey Island dock. Squib reckoned he would be allowed to collect from Carnahan’s own dock if he proved himself, but tonight he was being tested.

  In case I’m some class of juvenile narc, thought Squib, keeping an eye out for Willard from his pirogue in the cattails on the west bank across the layered slate water from Honey Island itself.

  The view was just fine, with the moonlight bouncing off the cypress leaves, and Squib saw Carnahan standing right there at the water’s edge in his drainpipe jeans and cut-off T-shirt. But Carnahan wasn’t alone. There were two people on the dock: Carnahan, with his Twisted Sister–style ratty hair, and one big refrigerator-sized guy. The big one was Regence Hooke, no doubt about that whatsoever.

  What the hell? thought Squib. Why would Hooke be communing with a criminal like Carnahan?

  He couldn’t tell what was going on from this distance—Hooke could be simply interrogating a suspect—but Squib doubted that. Regence Hooke wasn’t a man to put himself out, and especially not in the middle of the night.

  There was too much bayou between Squib and the suspicious twosome on the far bank to hear what was going on, a fact which would have to be remedied. And if a person had to put his finger on exactly when things went ass-over-balls down the crapper, then that moment was imminent.

  I need to get myself closer, thought Squib. Maybe I can get myself a little intelligence on Hooke in case I ever need a get-out-of-jail-free card.

  And there it was: the moment that would change the course of young Everett Moreau’s life. Squib was about to commit the cardinal sin of watchers, spies, and stalkers everywhere, that being: Don’t put yourself in the picture. Keep the hell out of whatever’s bei
ng spied upon, and do not muddy the waters with your own person.

  In Squib’s exact case, the waters were already plenty muddy, but the boy went right ahead and muddied them further. He cranked his propeller out of the water and paddled to the Honey Island bank, paying no heed to the bullfrogs croaking ominous warnings. His paddle grazed the rough hide of an alligator, but still Squib ignored the omens as he was at that age where every idea he had seemed like the best damn idea in the universe. So the boy forged ahead, keeping his torso bent over low and wishing he had some class of camouflage gunk to smear on his face and arms. Not that he possessed any of that specific stuff, but Momma had every cream under the sun and surely to Jesus one of her pots would have done the job. Still, too late to fret on that now. It wasn’t like he could have seen into the future and bargained on this encounter.

  It didn’t take more than half a dozen strokes to propel the pirogue across the bayou to the overhanging levee of Honey Island. Squib grabbed a fistful of cattails and tugged, sliding his craft into the cover of reeds and roots. The entire maneuver was whisper-quiet, and Squib congratulated himself on his own sneakiness, thinking that in another life he could have been Special Forces, maybe, or one of those ninja characters who favored black slippers and headbands.

  Hooke and Carnahan were still jawing away, and now Squib could catch snatches of conversation. He heard Hooke say, “I never saw any sign of it apart from a bend in the middle . . .”

  Which could have been pertaining to just about anything from Santa Claus to a police snitch.

  And a few seconds later Willard Carnahan remarked, “That wasn’t nuthin’ compared to this guy I met in Slidell.”

  Which was even more vague apart from the mention of the parish’s main city.

  This kind of harmless back-and-forth went on for an age, or so it felt, and Squib was beginning to doubt that anything useful could come of this eavesdropping. With the reeds rustling and the goddamn bugs kicking up their nightly swamp racket, he couldn’t track any conversation threads from end to end, and what he could hear sounded like regular bar bullshit.

  Willard: “Totally serious, Constable. Motherfucker eyeballed me, ’fore I opened his . . .”

  And Regence: “I swear, boy, Momma Hooke had this thing she did where two earthworms . . .”

  It was all useless jabber, so all in all, his big plan was proving itself something of a clusterballs. And Squib was reckoning he might as well shut up shop and hunker down till Regence took himself off upriver.

  I’ll shimmy in a little closer, he decided. Give ’er five minutes, then fuck it, I’m out.

  Squib crawled from the bed of his pirogue to the bank proper and, figuring he couldn’t get much lower in life, slithered through the reeds like a serpent, making his way ever so slowly round back of the dubious midnight pair, hoping that he wasn’t literally going to get bitten on the ass by some real shithead snake.

  He came around the bend of a stump just in time to see a swamp rat the size of a cantaloupe saunter off into the bush. The rat threw him a you’re lucky I ain’t hungry look before its hindquarters disappeared, and Squib was so rattled it took him a moment to pick up on a new tone in the Hooke-Carnahan conversation. Felt like the temperature was dropping a little between those boys.

  I should take a photo, thought Squib, and pulled his smartphone from the waterproof pocket of his camouflage-type work jeans. And as is so often the case, things would’ve turned out a whole lot better if the kid could’ve kept it in his pants.

  HOOKE WAS WONDERING whether there might be some way to avoid dropping the hammer on Willard.

  I could just let the idiot walk. Tell him to shave his head and buy a suit. Start calling himself Wilbert instead of Willard. Ivory would never know the difference.

  But Carnahan was one of those guys who was just too dumb to grasp the concept of consequences. Sooner or later he’d be shooting his mouth off down in the French Quarter about how he dodged Ivory’s bullet, and then Hooke himself would be in the crapper alongside Willard.

  Shit, he thought. I ain’t got a choice.

  Hooke took the job hoping he might find a little wiggle room somewhere along the line, but now that he was at the end of that line, so to speak, he could see that there was nothing for it but to complete the mission and then figure out some way to fill the Carnahan-sized hole in his own plans.

  Because Hooke had big plans that extended a tad further than running out his years as constable in this shithole parish. He had his beady eyes on Ivory’s entire operation, which he aimed to consolidate and extend north to Canada, cutting out South America altogether.

  He had been drip-feeding factoids about these plans, needing the smuggler to check out his theories, and Willard raised the subject now.

  “I talked to my guy at the truck stop,” he said. “Ain’t no limit to the number of truckers he can bring over to us. Ivory’s guys are bored out of their minds, nothing but gas station hookers for distraction. They’ll carry anything, crank or guns. Makes no never mind to those boys so long as they get paid.”

  “That’s good,” said Hooke, “real good, Willard. You write those names down?”

  “Sure did, just like you told me.” Willard handed Hooke a scrunched-up till receipt with names scrawled on the back.

  “I gotta say it, Willard,” said Hooke, pocketing the list, “you surely are rising to the challenge.”

  Carnahan accepted the compliment with shining eyes, like a puppy. “Thanks, partner. So, how long ’fore we make our move on Ivory?”

  “Soon, son,” said Regence. “I got to beef up my own end. I did some surveillance on G-Hop, found myself a few of my brethren. Two definite possibilities.”

  “And you’re set on guns? No drugs? Drugs is awful light and guns is awful heavy.”

  Hooke had been arguing this point with himself for months, so he was glad for a chance to lay it out for someone who wouldn’t be blabbing it in the bar later on.

  “Listen close, Willard,” he said. “I’m about to set down our entire philosophy. Heroin sales are down, right? Cocaine is cheap and every asshole with legs is trafficking it now. All the gangs. The Mexicans won’t need us soon; they got their own people on this side of the border. The Albanians, Russians, Puerto Ricans, Irish—even the Canadians have gangs now. The Bacon Brothers—can you believe that name, Willard? So pretty soon nobody will need Ivory’s drugs pipeline. Every thug with a backpack will become a mule. That ship has sailed, even if Ivory don’t yet know it.”

  “The goddamn pipeline is useless?” swore Willard. “What the hell are we taking it over for?”

  “The pipeline ain’t useless,” Hooke corrected him. “A pipeline is always useful. Even the product is useful right now. But we gotta diversify.”

  Willard played his part in the discussion by asking, “Yeah, but diversify into what?”

  “Diversify into the famous Second Amendment,” said Hooke, saluting. “The right to bear arms.”

  “We already got that right.”

  “Some states more than others,” said Hooke. “California ain’t so lenient. New York makes it near to impossible to secure a permit. New Jersey, Connecticut, even Hawaii. All these red-blooded Americans are crying out for guns. And if there is one thing I know, Willard . . .”

  Carnahan completed the thought. “It’s guns,” he said.

  “Exactly. You buy low in Louisiana and sell high in California. That’s how the world works. Believe me, the NRA won’t hold out forever against the libs. And the best thing is, we keep it all on the mainland. No South American hotheads needed.”

  “I get it now,” said Carnahan. “We’re a domestic operation.”

  Hooke snapped his fingers. “A domestic operation. Go America.”

  “You got it all figured, Constable,” said Willard. “Ain’t no way this can miss.”

  And then Hooke reached one hand into the pocket of his windbreaker, and the temperature dropped.

  SQUIB WAS ALL set up now, lying there
proud as punch in the swamp gunk with his camera trained on Hooke and Carnahan. Looked like the buddy-buddy part of the evening was over. Wasn’t so much laughing and knee-slapping going on now.

  “Here’s the problem, Willard,” Hooke was saying. “That beatdown you handed out in New Orleans.”

  Carnahan laughed, and Squib saw his teeth glowed black in the camera’s night-vision mode. “Fuck that kid, Regence. That shit he sold me weren’t no shit. You hear me? Goddamn baby ass-powder. Fucked my sinuses up for a week. Hell, they still fucked up. Every morning I’m waking up, I can’t hardly breathe. That ain’t no way to do business.”

  Hooke seemed to grow a little larger, like he was letting the real Regence out. “Thing is, son, that kid you whupped? You messed up his brain, so they pulled the plug. His momma had to sign off on that. Can you imagine?”

  Carnahan used both hands to tease his hair into vertical spikes. “That’s a shame, Regence. A damn shame. But that kid was all about the product, telling me how gen-u-ine it was, all that shit. You can’t stiff customers and expect no payback.”

  Hooke draped an arm around Carnahan’s shoulders: a bear hugging a deer. Usually the deer has the sense to know it’s on the menu, but Willard Carnahan must have been thinking himself indispensable.

  “I shouldn’t even be paying for blow,” said Willard, all unawares, “with all the shit I run upriver for you. But I found myself in a party mood, ya know, so I dipped into my own goddamn pocket for some hard-earned. And what does that asshole do? Sells me fake shit. Me! The fucking coke pilot.”

  “You got a point,” said Hooke, and he did this little upside-down thing with his mouth like he was actually considering Carnahan’s argument. “But see, the kid was Ivory’s nephew. Trying to prove himself. Wasn’t supposed to be on that corner. Young Vincent was supposed to be hitting the books.”

  This was a lot of information, and specific, too, like Hooke had gotten it from the horse’s mouth.

  “I . . . Ivory. F-fucking Ivory?” said Carnahan, stumbling over his words. “I didn’t have that knowledge, Constable. How could I know that? Ivory? He was just some Italian punk on a corner pushing baby powder, far as I was concerned. I got some credit with Ivory, don’t I?”