“Wait a minute,” I interjected, “How could you rule it a suicide? Has the coroner already done an autopsy? That’s pretty fast for a drifter-psycho case like this, isn’t it? Why the priority?”
“Slow week. I really have to ask you to go.”
“What was the cause of death?” I demanded.
“It was a suicide. That’s all I’m at liberty to divulge. Now, please...”
“You want to tell me how some guy garrotes himself, but has the presence of mind to get rid of the wire before he dies?”
“So you were there!” he said, slapping his hand on the desk.
“You know damn well I was. You knew it the minute those two guys told you I was there.”
His momentary look of interrogative triumph came to a screeching halt. His face went blank.
“What two guys?” he asked.
“The two guys who rousted me at the Duvalier. The government spooks.”
He stood, crossed his office, and closed the door. Without returning to his desk he stared me down. “Listen to me. I’m only saying this once. Walk away. This is the first I’ve heard about the two guys you describe, but I know their type. They’re in place to make problems disappear. I mean, like in the ‘was never seen again’ sense. These are not people you want to screw around with. Forget Baxter Flatt and go to work at that shit-box bar tonight grateful that you still can.”
I didn’t give him a chance to ask me again. The fix was obviously in, and nothing I could do or say was going to wedge any more out of Nuckolls. Someone had leaned on the parish, pushed it to make quick work of the Flatt affair, to sweep it under the bureaucratic carpet.
Claire Sturges had said it all. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair, and it got my dander up. That’s good. I work better when I’m personally involved. I had four names — the names written in the spiral notebook in Flatt’s pocket. Four starting points.
When it comes to drilling down into people’s lives, like really deep down, I don’t fool around. I go straight to church.
Quentin Wardell is a genealogist at the New Orleans branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The Mormons take genealogy seriously, as they maintain that if they can convert you to the faith, they can also retroactively induct all your forebears. In order to do that, they need to know who your ancestors were, and they maintain one of the largest genealogical databases in the world. One side effect of such a huge system is that you can also find out all sorts of things about people who are still breathing.
Quentin is in his mid eighties. He has spent most of his life surrounded by books and computers. He doesn’t get out much. A great deal of his enjoyment late in life revolves around listening to my stories of derring-do, which enable him to vicariously experience a more action-packed existence. In return for my tales, he provides me with information. If you want to go data mining, Quentin Wardell is the head digger.
“You have a story for me today?” he asked, as I settled into a comfy chair in his office.
“Have I told you the one about the kidnapped poodle and the heiress?”
“No.”
I told him the story, which ended with me getting six bones in my hand broken. He hung on every word like a five-year-old listening to a bedtime fable. When it was finished, he clapped his hands in delight and asked how he could help me.
I handed him the list of names I had found on Baxter Flatt: Clyde Gilstrup, Ted Forde, Robin McLean, and Jackson Rogers. He went to work, and in less than a quarter-hour he had all the information I needed.
“One of these is not like the others,” I said, as I looked over the results. “Three businessmen and a soldier.”
“A Marine,” Q countered. “They are rather adamant about the distinction.”
Clyde Gilstrup owned a chemical company that provided materials for oil fracking in Third World countries. Ted Forde was an investment banker heavily leveraged in the former Soviet states. Robin McLean was an advertising media consultant with ties to Arab-language radio networks in the U.S. All three, like Flatt, were single. There was no evidence that any of them knew the others. None of them seemed in a position to provide anything of consequence to a foreign agent. There was nothing in any of their histories that indicated they’d be capable of anything approaching the violence that had been visited on Flatt.
Jackson Rogers was the odd man out. Career military, retired as a captain. Huge gaps in his military record, weeks and even months during which details of his work were unavailable. Rogers’s history suggested he might have information to peddle. Flatt had somehow compromised Rogers into divulging that information. It didn’t have to be earthshaking. I knew enough about how the intelligence jigsaw puzzle works to reason that you make the big picture out of all the tiny jagged pieces. It would be easy for a supposedly bona fide U.S. intelligence operative to set up an unwary soldier. The fact that Rogers was a Marine also made him the odds-on favorite to be the one who put the piano wire to Flatt’s throat.
I drove my dilapidated Pinto to Metairie, parking it around the corner from Rogers’s home. He lived in an unassuming ranch, the type of place one might afford on a military pension. It had a long gravel driveway and signs of construction in the backyard. It seemed Rogers was putting in a swimming pool.
One issue troubled me. Assuming I could get Rogers to admit to killing Flatt, what then? Should I call Nuckolls and tell him I caught the guy who killed his suicide? If Flatt had been leaking secrets to the other guys, maybe Rogers had done a service by turning out his lights. It was moral ambiguities like this that sometimes drove me nuts.
I snuck around to Rogers’s back porch and fitted a pry bar into the jamb of the sliding glass door. It gave with only a little resistance. I hoped I hadn’t set off any silent alarms. After closing the sliding door behind me, I checked for security-system wires and was relieved to find none. I had waited to make certain that Rogers was away from the house. I wanted time to look around a bit.
I found his pistol more or less where I had expected. Humans are creatures of habit and conditioning. We have learned from movies and books that the best place to keep a gun is near the bed, where we are most vulnerable. Most people keep guns in a bedside table or clothes closet. Rogers had been cagey. I found his in a holster taped to one of the bed slats.
As I’ve mentioned, I don’t care for guns. I especially dislike them in the hands of people who might want to do me some mischief.
I put the pistol inside a couple of self-sealing plastic sandwich bags from the kitchen and stashed it in the toilet tank of the hallway bathroom. I could always call Rogers anonymously later and tell him where I put it. The rest of the house was spotless, except for the usual smattering of bills on the study desk. It reflected his military mind — clean, ordered, disciplined. No allowance for luxury or extravagance. He had no need for accoutrements. His world was functional and direct. I wondered what Flatt had on him to make the captain break and spill the family secrets. Fifty-two years old, unmarried, no little black books lying around. Fairly striking, if the photograph I found on his desk was any indication.
My reverie was cut short by the sound of his car as it crunched its way up the gravel driveway. I heard the garage door open to admit him to my parlor. I positioned myself behind the kitchen counter, across from the door leading in from the garage.
Rogers walked in, all six-plus feet of him. Straight pewter hair cut close and plastered flat from years of training. Thick chest and flat washboard of a stomach. Next to him I looked sloppy and porcine. I had him by several inches, though, and about a hundred pounds, so I thought I could take him.