Still, turning down the call wasn't an option. Bettencourt's houseman was under orders to accept the charges, and he found Merle in the playroom, working on a solitary game of nine ball.
"Boss's on the phone," he said, and wandered off to God knew where.
Merle felt like yelling after him that he was the boss, but it would have been a waste of breath, aside from downright dangerous. Instead, he made a beeline for the nearest telephone and lifted the receiver. "Hey, Armand."
"Hey, Merle."
"Is this line like, you know, safe?"
"How should I know?" Armand snapped at him. "I'm callin' from the damn joint."
"Oh, yeah. What's up?"
"What's up is I just had a visitor," the Cajun godfather replied.
"Who is that?"
"I didn't catch his name, all right?"
That seemed a little odd to Merle, a total stranger showing up to visit at the federal pen and he forgets to give his name, but Bettencourt suspected that wasn't the problem Fortier had called up to discuss. "So, what'd he want?"
"Came by to tell me he been talkin' to some boys down your way," Fortier replied.
"My boys." You could at least have said our boys, Merle thought, but kept it to himself. And said, "Talkin' about what?"
"This thing with Leon," Fortier replied.
"Aw, merde. "
"You see now why I'm callin'?"
"Yeah, I think so. This guy give you Leon's name?"
"Come out with it like it was nothin'," Armand said. "Made like he knew all about that other business, too."
Merle had to puzzle over that one for a moment. Other business? Finally, it came to him that Fortier was making reference to the purge of prosecution witnesses for which Leon had been retained. The knowledge made his flesh crawl uncomfortably. The way he felt right now, his mama would have said someone had walked across his grave. But how the hell could they do that, when he was still alive?
"He say what boys was talkin'?" Bettencourt inquired.
"One name he give me," Armand said. "The pig man."
Pig man. Pig man? Wait, he had it! "Yeah, okay. Who else?"
"I said one name! You got spuds in your ears?" When Merle made no reply, the Cajun godfather continued. "Another thing. Some shit about Leon and Gypsies."
"Gypsies?"
"That's what I said! You got a fuckin' parrot on your shoulder?"
Bettencourt was reaching up to check before he caught himself, "Uh-uh," he said.
"So check this out," said Fortier. "Leon and Gypsies. All I know. And take care of that other thing."
"Okay."
"You keep a lookout for this bastard, Merle, you hear me?"
"Right. "
The line went dead without so much as a goodbye, and Bettencourt returned the telephone receiver to its cradle. Jesus Christ, as if he didn't have enough problems to deal with as it was. Now one of the prosecution witnesses was still out there, and old Armand was nagging him to get the job done. He had started thinking lately that it wouldn't be so bad if Armand lost his damn appeal and had to spend a few more hundred years inside. Like anyone would miss him but his bimbos.
Bettencourt could run the show himself. God knew he had been handling the grunt work long enough, while Armand got the cream and accolades. So much for justice. Now this shit about the Gypsies, and he couldn't even find out what it was supposed to mean, because Armand was worried that the pay phone in the joint might sprout an extra pair of ears.
Leon and Gypsies. What the hell? Of course, the more he thought about it, turned it over in his mind, the more they seemed to go together. Gypsies had that spooky reputation, and old Leon, well, they didn't come much spookier than that.
Merle knew exactly what he had to do, and while he didn't like it one damn bit, there was no viable alternative.
He grabbed the telephone again, but it was dead. Now, what the-? Instantly it came to him. His houseman, who had taken Armand's call, had left the damn extension off the hook. Merle cradled the receiver, biting off an urge to slam it down with crushing force, and reached the playroom's door in three long strides.
"Arno? Arno, you idjit, where you at?"
"What, boss?" Arno emerging from the kitchen with a turkey leg in hand, grease smeared around his lips.
"Would you be kind enough to go hang up the telephone?"
"Okay."
Sweet Jesus. Now Merle had to make the call he had been dreading ever since the Feds sent Armand to Atlanta. There was no way to avoid it any longer.
He was bound to fix himself a meeting with a goddamn loup-garou.
THE ROUND-TRIP To Atlanta took four hours, not including time spent at the prison, picking up and dropping off his rental car and dawdling through the traffic-crowded streets. All things considered, it was well into midafternoon when Remo disembarked at New Orleans International Airport, west of town, and bid a sad farewell to the incessant squalling of the two brats who had occupied the seats behind him. The whole way back, he had been mulling over Fortier's reaction to the bits of information he had dropped. The Cajun boss was hanging in there, had let nothing slip from his side, but the grim expression on his face when Remo mentioned "Leon," although quickly covered by a sneer, had shown that he was stung. The mobster's brain was working overtime when Remo left him, that was obvious, and he would not allow the game to start unraveling if there was anything that he could do to bring it back on course.
Remo was counting on it.
The sooner Fortier demanded swift results of his staff, the quicker Remo would be treated to a one-on-one with his pet loup-garou.
And what would happen then?
Before he left New Orleans, Remo had inquired about the Gypsies and was told that five were dead, two others barely hanging on with life support, six others treated and released for injuries that ranged from broken bones to multiple dog bites. Survivors who were capable of talking told police a pack of wolves had burst into their camp and run amok. Of course, the only wolves known to reside within Louisiana's borders lived in zoos, and so police assumed the Gypsies were mistaken, possibly hysterical. There had been problems in the past with feral dogs-some wild-born, others cast-off pets who joined a roving pack in order to survive. They came in from the bayous now and then, attracted by the city lights and smell of food, reacting viciously if humans tried to run them off.
It was a logical description of events, one that the media could swallow and regurgitate with sidebars about leash laws and the tragedy of heartless bastards who dumped their unwanted pets without a second thought. King Ladislaw, one of the evening's battle-scarred survivors, had spent time enough with the police in several states to know that there was no point in disputing the official version of events. As soon as he was reasonably satisfied as to his daughter's short-term safety, he had packed up the remainder of his tribe and hit the road. Aurelia had her ways of keeping in touch.
When she had spoken with her father, he had told a vital bit of trivia. The attackers had witnessed her leaving. The Romany had, as well, and they assumed she was fleeing, leaving them to their fate. Until the attackers ran off after her. Then the Gypsies had understood that the loups-garous were after her specifically. She had done a brave thing leading them away from the camp, alone and unprotected. And they all agreed it would be the best thing for her to stay away for the time being.
That was when she and Remo decided it would be best if she stuck with them.
Remo was getting his own little merry band of followers. Chiun spent most of his time lost in his own little world of meditation or Spanish-language TV. He was being uncharacteristically aloof, and he wasn't interested in telling Remo why. This was standard behavior for Chiun, who loved to create his little mysteries and impart wisdom by letting Remo learn things for himself. Right now Chiun claimed that he was allowing Remo to immerse himself fully in the role of Reigning Master of Sinanju. As far as Remo could tell, that meant he did all the work while Chiun "meditated" in front of the Mexican soap operas. With Chiun only physically present and with his two new companions, Remo felt like the guy in some bad TV show who wakes up to find himself living with the wrong family.