"Back to Azzara's."
"Come here first. I want to go with you."
Cole thought for a moment, trying to sort out the new facts.
"Someone is hunting these people. We know that for sure. We thought it was Mendoza and Gomer, but it wasn't, and now Miguel Azzara is their best friend."
"Yes."
"Protecting them?"
"You go into business with people, you take care of them."
"I can't help wondering why a Trece street gang and Mexican cowboys with their own jet need to be in business with a man who fries oysters."
"I'll be there soon. We'll find out."
Cole spent the next ten minutes trying to identify the owners of Citation Jet XB-CCL, but had no luck. He was still on hold with the FAA when his call waiting told him Lucy Chenier was calling. He dropped the FAA and took Lucy's call.
Her voice was in full-on professional mode.
"Can you talk?"
"Absolutely. What did you find out?"
"I'm going to put you on speaker. Terry's here."
The sound qual ity went from crisp to hollow when she put him on speaker.
"Hey, Terry. Thanks for helping on this."
"Hey, man, no problem. You hear me okay?"
"Hear you fine."
Terry had a mellow voice with a woodsy Louisiana accent. He'd grown up in a family of police officers, and had been an officer himself before retiring to work as an investigator for Lucy's firm.
Lucy said, "So you know, we're in my office and we're alone. No one can hear what we say except you, me, and Terry."
"Okay."
"Are you by yourself?"
"Yeah. It's just us."
"Joe isn't there?"
"Not yet. He's on his way."
Cole wondered why she was being so legal.
"Okay. I'm emailing two pictures. Are you at your computer?"
"Will be. I'm going there now."
"Tell me if they're the people you know as Dru Rayne and Wilson Smith."
Her email was waiting when Cole reached his computer.
"Hang on. I'm opening it."
Cole wasn't surprised when the picture of Wilson Smith turned out to be a booking photo, but still felt a vague disappointment. The picture of Dru Rayne was a snapshot, showing her behind a bar, with her hair up, a crooked smile, and rainbows of cheap bracelets on her wrists. She was wearing a tight black T-shirt that read: Tip the Waitress or She'll Spit in Your Drink.
"Yeah. This is them."
Terry came back sounding pleased.
"Damn, boy."
Lucy said, "What we're about to tell you comes from a senior investigator with the Louisiana DOJ. Remember what I said about not being able to put the genie back in the bottle?"
"Are they going to call me?"
Terry spoke up again.
"He pressed me, buddy. I didn't give him your name or location, but five will get you six he's on the phone with the FBI. They're tracking a string of murders tied to this case, and the number is growing."
Cole felt a leaden I-knew-this-would-get-worse feeling as he stared at Smith's mug shot.
"Smith's a murderer?"
"Yeah, he probably is, but I'm not talking about him. At least eight and possibly nine murders have been committed by a person or persons trying to find the man you know as Wilson Smith."
Cole felt a cold tingle in the center of his chest. Pike was right-something way more dangerous than street-corner bangers had been in the Venice Canals.
"He found them. He's here."
Lucy and Terry spoke over each other, garbling each other's words before Lucy won out.
"How do you know he's found them?"
Cole told them about Mendoza and Gomer.
"We're not sure why they were watching the house, but they were found murdered the next morning. Joe believes they were murdered by someone who's looking for Wilson and Dru."
Terry's low voice was directed to Lucy.
"This isn't good. If this is the guy, we need to put our folks down here on his trail while it's hot."
"Elvis and I understand that, Terry. Tell him about Rainey."
Cole thought he heard Terry take a breath, almost as if he was trying to regain composure before he could get back to the business at hand.
"Smith's real name is William Allan Rainey. He smuggled cash out of the country for some boys down here hooked up with a Bolivian cartel. My guy says, all told, he probably transported six or seven hundred million dollars before he was done."
"Drug money?"
"Where else you gonna see that kind of cash?"
Drugs were a cash business, and the problem for foreign drug suppliers was getting their cash out of the country. Experienced cops had told him it was far easier for suppliers to get their drugs in than to get their cash out. They couldn't deposit it in banks or transfer it in meaningful amounts because banks were watched by the government, and transferring a few thousand here and there was useless to an organization that generated hundreds of millions in cash.
Cole said, "Smuggling cash doesn't rate a sealed file."
"That was the DEA. They broke him, then cut a deal with him for info about the cartel's business."
"He was an informant."
"Yeah, for a couple of years, and maybe that's why he did what he did. Rainey and the woman disappeared two weeks before Katrina with twelve million dollars of Bolivian money. They've been on the run ever since."
Cole leaned back.
"Twelve million. Get out."
Lucy said, "Cash."
"The cartel boys put a million dollar reward on Rainey's head and sent up a specialist to find him."
"Specialist as in a killer?"
"Specialist as in finding people the Bolivians want found, and doing whatever it is they want done. Over at the DOJ, they called him the executioner. That's who you have runnin' around out there."
Cole felt a second chill, and listened as Terry continued.
According to Terry's contact, William Allan Rainey had spent his life jumping between small-time criminal activity and questionable business ventures. Rainey opened several restaurants and bars that failed, but eventually created a stable business for himself as a wholesale seafood supplier, buying shrimp and fish from local fishermen to sell to other people's restaurants. The fishermen Rainey dealt with were one-boat operators who fished the Gulf from pinprick towns in the bayous along the Louisiana coast. Investigators believed it was during this period that Rainey became involved with people who were in business with the Bolivian cartel, and Rainey, who had always been attracted to easy money, saw a way to cut himself in on the partnership. The Bolivians needed a way to sneak their cash out of the country, and Rainey provided the method. His daily contact with fishermen allowed him to recruit people who were open to carrying questionable cargo. Especially if they were behind on their rent and needed the money.
Cole stopped him.
"Did these people know what they were carrying?"
"The deal was, no questions asked, but Rainey told at least two fishermen they were carrying pot on its way to Miami. That's the way it was packaged, in black, waterproof bales. How it worked was, Rainey and a couple of guards would hand off the bales to a fisherman on his way out, along with waypoint coordinates to meet up with a vessel out past the rigs. All they had to do was hand over the bales, then get on with their fishing."
"Rainey was telling the DEA about this?"
Terry laughed.
"Uh-uh. He fed them an occasional inbound shipment or dropped the dime on small-time players. Just enough to keep the DEA off his back. They didn't know he was smuggling cash until everything blew up."
"What happened?"
Lucy said, "The woman. Dru Rayne's true name is Rose Marie Platt. Rainey met her when she worked at a restaurant down in the Quarter for a man named Tolliver James. She and James were living together."
Terry jumped in again.
"James bought fish and shrimp from Rainey, so the speculation is this was how Rainey and Platt met. Couple of months later, she broke up with James and moved in with Rainey. Couple of months after that, which puts us two weeks before the storm, Rainey and Platt disappeared with the Bolivians' money. On or about that same day, a shrimper named Mike Fourchet went fishing, but didn't come back. Mike and his boat were found at a landing on Quarantine Bay. Fourchet had been shot in the back of the head."