"He seems to think so. I'm reserving judgment."
"I think you will find what you are looking for," Aurelia said.
"And what about yourself?" he asked.
"I must be done with this before I can rejoin my people," she replied.
"That's it?"
Aurelia frowned at him and said, "What else?" He was distracted from the question by the sound of Cuvier returning, boot heels clomping on the wooden pier. The cabin cruiser shuddered as the Cajun landed aboard.
"So, what's the word?" asked Remo.
"Word is," Cuvier replied, "we got ourselves a loup-garou."
MERLE BETTENCOURT was feeling more uneasy by the minute as the day wore on. He kept expecting one of those collect calls from Atlanta, and he didn't have a clue what he would tell Armand about the previous night's screwup on Tchoupitoulas Street.
Armand ought to take the blame himself. He insisted they have old Leon and his bowwows handle it, as much because Leon already had the contract, cash up front, as from Armand's desire to see his enemies destroyed by something from Friday Night Fright Theater.
Instead of good news in the paper this morning, Bettencourt was looking at a report of several wolves that had been killed on Tchoupitoulas Street and several dead and wounded Mardi Gras revelers.
The night clerk at Desire House told reporters and police that he had three guests missing in the wake of what appeared to be some weird, destructive prank. The police were interested in the absent strangers-two white men and "one old Chinaman," the night clerk said-in an effort to clear up the matter of the wolves. No mention of Jean Cuvier by name. The white men had been registered as Remo Gillman and Alex Holland, the Chinaman as Kim Ho Sun.
Damn comedians.
Merle's fury, generated by the first reports from Tchoupitoulas Street, had settled down enough that he could think straight and focus on his problem rather than his rage.
Leon had to go. That much was obvious, and Bettencourt no longer cared what Armand thought about his so-called loup-garou. The hairy bastard was a menace, flubbing vital contracts, leaving dead wolves as his calling card. Merle didn't intend to let the cops take Leon, wouldn't see the wolf man turn and rat him out, as others had betrayed Armand.
Before he took off on a wolf hunt, though, there was another problem to deal with. In the past two hours there had been three phone calls to his office, each describing a peculiar foursome headed for the bayou country southwest of New Orleans. Two white men, some kind of Oriental and a woman dressed in Gypsy clothes. Merle didn't know what that was all about, but he recalled Leon's recent hassle with the Gypsies near Westwego and assumed the woman was now mixed up with Cuvier and his bodyguards somehow.
The foursome had acquired a boat, and they were well into the back country by now. His spotters had them moving roughly south-southwest. Even though they traveled on the water, it would be no great challenge for a team of swamp-bred Cajuns to track them. Nip their little half-assed expedition in the bud.
Merle had already picked the shooters he would use, the same boys he should have sent the previous night to Tchoupitoulas Street. A six-man team was overkill, no doubt about it, but he wanted no more screwups, nothing to make Armand think he couldn't handle it. If this petition for a new trial made the grade, and Armand walked because the feds were suddenly bereft of witnesses, Merle knew he would be set for life.
Leon was history. He simply didn't know it yet. That shaggy freak had seen his last full moon.
THE HUNTING PARTY was assembled on a private dock on the outskirts of Westwego. Four limousines had come and gone, depositing their passengers and cargo: backpacks and camping gear from L.L. Bean, long guns in hand-tooled leather cases from Abercrombie ur of the six men standing on the dock wore tailored camouflage, including long-billed caps, and heavy boots designed for rugged wear. Each of the four wore Ray-Ban sunglasses, carried long survival knives and shiny semiauto-matic pistols, either on the hip or slung under one arm. They smoked cigars and laughed politely at one another's jokes.
The last two members of the team stood out. One was the guide, a wiry swamp rat with a patch over the empty socket where his left eye used to be and a two-day growth of beard. Decked out in rumpled Army-surplus fatigue pants, he stood apart and waited for the others to complete their socializing. Every now and then he spit a stream of brown tobacco juice into the water, wiping his lips with his sleeve.
Then there was Maynard Grymsdyke, in denim shirt and jeans, a jacket he would have to shed once daylight started heating up the swamp and a pair of brand-new hiking boots that hurt his feet. It seemed impossible that he could already have blisters, but his heels were killing him, and he had only walked a few steps, first from his apartment to the limo, then to the dock.
It was damn chilly in the predawn darkness. The cold mist rolling off the bayou dampened Maynard's spirits-as if he needed any help in that department. He was sleepy, cold and generally miserable, revolted by the prospect of the next two days with this miserable company.
The tallest of Breen's guests was Marshall Dillon. "No relation," he was quick to tell each new acquaintance before miming a fast draw for some nonexistent movie camera. Dillon was the founder, president and CEO of Petro-Gas Conglomerates, which dominated oil and natural gas leases from Port Arthur, Texas, to Biloxi, Mississippi. At fifty-six, Dillon had indulged himself along life's highway, and his six-foot-four frame wasn't quite tall enough to stretch three hundred pounds and make it look like muscle. When the oilman laughed he had a tendency to spray saliva, but he was so filthy rich that no one seemed to mind... at least, until his back was turned and he was out of earshot.
Hubert Murphy was a huge name in the Southern banking world, but reputation didn't reflect size. A veritable dwarf to Dillon's giant, Murphy might have been five-three in cowboy boots, and everything about him seemed a trifle underweight, except the small paunch that he had developed from good living and a lack of daily exercise. Murphy wore steel-rimmed bifocals that made his eyes appear to shrink or bulge each time he moved his head. His politics, well known to Maynard Grymsdyke, placed him somewhere to the right of Heinrich Himnnler when it came to taxes and social welfare.
The last of Breen's supporters to accept his weekend invitation was a portly man of average size named Victor Charles. He made his home in Baton Rouge, where he could keep an eye on the state government from day to day, and his most striking feature was a total lack of striking features. Grymsdyke guessed that Victor Charles was closer to the fifty mark than forty, but he could as easily have pegged the guess at thirty-five or sixty. Charles had that kind of face, ageless and bland, the next best thing to nondescript, but there was nothing commonplace about his bank accounts. His first few million had been made in cotton, then he branched out into big-time shrimping in the Gulf. A year or two back his politics became more extreme, to the ongoing concern of his allies. When shrimp prices plummeted forty percent due to a surge in overseas imports of cheap farm-raised shrimp, Charles went on a rampage. Almost single-handedly he funded a slew of illegal-dumping lawsuits against several Asian governments, which made him a hero to scores of bankrupt bayou shrimpers. Truth was, he cared a lot less about their livelihood than about getting even with the foreigners who kept interfering with his country.
Grymsdyke wouldn't have chosen these three as companions for a two-day bayou killing spree, but he was wise enough to know that Breen's safari had no more to do with hunting than it did with acid rain or women's rights. Elmo was bent on strengthening his bonds with three men who could help him buy the statehouse in November, making sure they understood that he was on their side. Before the hunting trip was over, Grymsdyke had no doubt that new deals would be struck, with cash exchanged for promises that Breen could only keep if he was governor. It was the way things worked in politics, on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, and Grymsdyke had no personal objections to the game.