“That’s Sergeant Stork from Staten Island?”
“Now he’s Assistant Warden Stork down around Galveston. Making six figures at a Zyron prison. I called him and said that I was thinking about changing jobs. He asked if I wanted national or international. After a little back-and-forth he told me to come down and talk to Ben Ingram. So I made an appointment.”
“You actually talked to the man?” I asked.
“Talk?” Glad said. “I had a meeting with him.”
“That’s where I saw you,” Rags remembered out loud.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked both men.
“I didn’t know who he was,” Rags told me.
Turning to Glad I said, “I just wanted you for backup.”
“I can do that too.”
That was the good and bad about my friend and traitor. He did things his own way, which sometimes was a boon and others a bust.
“What did he say?”
“He said that there was a position in the corporation called high marshal. A kind of enforcer who moves between countries trying to keep the peace and assess threats. Stork told him I was good at keeping balls in the air — in the air and the nutcracker too.”
“Was he any more specific?”
“He said that there were times when a high marshal had to work outside of local law. Times when there might be a higher calling.”
“And how much would you be paid for all this?” That was Rags.
“I’d get a base salary of two hundred seventy-five and then bonuses in cryptocurrency. That could go up to near a million. I tell ya, it was mighty tempting.”
“Did you take him up on it?” I asked, my teeth feeling and tasting like iron nails.
My old dispatcher gauged me with shamrock eyes. He understood the question and knew the consequences harbored in my heart.
“No, brother,” he said. “I wouldn’t betray you and I wouldn’t work for a company that big anyway. On the force we’re all friends. You eat at people’s houses and know their children’s names. You would put down your life for a brother in blue. We’re not a business, we’re a church.”
“Damn,” Rags said. “You’re good.”
“Just a cop,” Glad replied. “Honest or not.”
We worked out a plan for the next day. What it lacked in brilliance it made up for with simplicity. That done, we ordered a round of drinks, ready to call it a night.
That was before sloe-eyed Lula came in with three girlfriends.
That kismet thing was still working. The moment I noticed her she turned to see me. I smiled, instantly dispelling her first instinct, which was to run. Instead Lula grinned and said something to her girlfriends. They conferred for fifteen seconds or so, casting glances in our direction, then forded the now crowded room, headed for our table.
I got to my feet feeling a little giddy. Women have always been my weakness.
Lula was the first to get to us. She kissed me on the lips.
“Hi, baby,” she said.
“Lou.” I guess I just like nicknames. “These are my friends Glad and Rags.”
“Glad rags,” an astute white associate of Lula’s said. “I’m Roxanne and this is Nona and Chichi.”
Roxanne was tall and blond, naturally so. Nona was very dark-skinned, where Chichi was a deep amber Mexican lass. These ladies spent at least three hours readying for Wreckless and now they bubbled over with cleavage, conversation, and laughter. I ordered three bottles of champagne thinking that this might well be my last night.
Gladstone left with the white girl, no surprise there, while Rags went off with the other two. There were many things I didn’t know about my cousin. I made up my mind that night to find out what they were.
17
“I’m glad you stayed the night this time,” I said to Lula.
We were sitting on the little terrace eating buttered toast and jam off a paper plate set on a small cast-iron table. I’d made a pot of coffee and Lula was smoking a filterless Camel.
“I figured if I was lucky enough to meet you the second time that maybe we should get to know each other a little better,” she said through a rising screen of exhaled smoke.
“Wasn’t so much luck. I noticed you had a few matchboxes from Wreckless and so I hoped you might drop by.”
“Sorry I’m on my period, then. You would’a been luckier with Nona or Chichi.”
“Why not Roxanne?”
“You don’t like white girls. Not like that.”
“I’m happy with you, Lou. Anyway I was too dizzy to do much after all that champagne.”
The 24/7 birds were chirping in the treetops and the streets were populated by people going to work and school.
“It’s real nice up in here,” Lula said. “I like spendin’ time with you.”
“As much as with Alfonso?”
“That man is just a hard dick and a hard time, like my grandmother used to say. He’d never make me toast and coffee. When Alfonso wake up in the mornin’, the only thing he has to say is it’s time to go.”
We spent the early morning talking about life and how it seems to work, her charms and mine. After that I got dressed in my gray suit, surreptitiously pocketed my gun, and brought Lula down to my rented car. We drove to the affluent Buckhead area, where I bought her a silk dress and a citrine necklace.
“Where we gonna have dinner?” she asked as we exited the boutique.
“Where would you like?”
“Are you rich?”
“Not really. But I can afford a good dinner.”
“Okay, then. I’ll call you at five to tell you where.”
I gave her money for a cab and she kissed me good-bye.
Watching her walk away, I was hoping I would be able to make that date.
My destination was the U-Turn Café, also in Buckhead. I decided to stretch my legs and walked the six blocks to the little espresso bar.
He was sitting at a small round table at the innermost end of the long room, reading a newspaper. The clock on the wall above his head registered 1:47. The news must have been engrossing. It wasn’t until my shadow spread across his table that he became aware that someone was there.
When he looked up, his face at first darkened, but then he smiled broadly.
“Mr. Oliver,” said Ben Ingram, also known as Thad Longerman. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”
The familiarity threw me off a moment. I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up a finger with one hand and picked up a cell phone with the other.
Speaking into the phone he said, “Hold my next two,” then disconnected the call. “Sit, sit.”
I obeyed the offer and said, “Tex Bradford must’ve had a hidden camera.”
The affable jailer nodded pleasantly. “Over the front door. Amazing what image software can do nowadays. It should be illegal.”
“Lots of things should be.”
“What can I get for you today, Mr. Ingram?” a young man asked.
He was of medium height with strawberry blonde hair that would have put Roxanne to shame.
“Café con leche for me, Mark. What’ll you have, Mr. Oliver?”
“Sign over the bar says something about pastrami soup? What’s that like?”
“Better than it sounds,” the smiling heir of the Vikings allowed. “It’s a cream soup with pieces of pastrami and bitter greens in it. Pretty good.”
“I’ll take it.”
“You’re the adventurous type,” Ingram noted as Mark went off on his tasks.
“Only with food.”
“If that were true you wouldn’t be sitting at this table.”
The words, the tone of his voice, made me want to reach for the gun in my pocket.
“I’m not here to get in anybody’s way, Ben. I’m just gathering information for a client.”
“What client?” His smile was infinitely patient.