12 Bullets Page 10

  He ends with, “Church under attack and I got a murder case and all we’ve been able to do is sit around and talk about this.”

  “What murder?” Fel Jones asks.

  Juanita answers fast, “Cat with a greased-up tail.” She explains about the dead cat.

  “Felineicide,” goes Jordan. “Cochise is fired up. They following Jessie and someone murdered a cat.”

  AFT man getting cocky now, knowing Beau is Sioux and Cochise was Apache.

  Juanita cringes but Beau’s face remains dead-pan fuckin’ serious.

  “The Mafiosi, any still in custody?” LaStanza asks.

  Beau shakes his head. “The DA’s taking the Bontonomo shooting to a grand jury but it’s justifiable homicide. The Kansas City boys, all we have is a misdemeanor and they’re long gone. All four Berettas, however, are at the LSP Crime Lab for comparisons.”

  “Besides bodyguarding Jessie,” goes Stan-the-Man Smith, retired NOPD lawyer-turned PI. “What else can we do? They ain’t talking, are they?”

  “I’m was thinking of bringing Nick Cataldo in.” Beau watches LaStanza as he says, “No meeting in a restaurant. I want him on my turf. I’m going to show him my knife and let him know I’m holding him responsible.

  “Fuckin’ goombas following my girlfriend.”

  “Fuckin’ A,” goes Stan which lets Beau know this must be a bad idea.

  “Yeah, you right,” says Leopold.

  Beau waits and LaStanza finally says, “Snatching Cataldo and he’ll lose face in front of his family and you’ll make an enemy of him.”

  “He’s no fuckin’ friend.”

  “Why don’t we make him think we think he is a friend. Tell him everything. He’s friendly with the Incantos but does he know about the Raccontos and Cavalcares moving money into Louisiana?”

  “Maybe it’s a consolidation of power,” says Juanita.

  Fel Jones, the only one who used to investigate LCN when he was NOPD, goes, “We need to talk with Ashton and your FBI friend.” He looks at LaStanza. “Historically, the former bosses, Big Luke Incanto and Alphonso Badalamente were friendly, to a point, primarily because the Incantos stayed in Mississippi and Alabama but Badalamente did not get along with the Raccontos and never Miami’s Sal ‘the Shark’ Cavalcare who have been known to use non-Sicilians to run drug operations, even perform hits. Cubans and Haitians. Yet, the New Orleans family is historically the richest outside the five New York families.

  LaStanza goes, “I’ll watch his eyes. He may know about these Raccontos. May not. Could be a move against the new Don. Nick ‘the Cat’. You tip him off about this, you may make a friend, even if you don’t want one.

  “What intrigues me is the Berettas. That’s a defensive weapon for LCN. If this was going to be a hit, they’d use untraceable .22 caliber pistols. Quieter and just as deadly, little pellets tearing into a chest, ripping holes though veins, arteries, organs or bouncing through a brain.”

  The warrior chant starts up and Beau answers his iPhone. It’s his office. Aileen tells him Bishop Eskinde just called. An email arrived with instructions on where to send the money.

  BACK AT THE ARCHDIOCESE office, Bishop Eskine passes a print out of the email sent to the archdiocese from greasycat1962@yahoo.com

  Put $5,000 in used $20 bills in envelope

  Friday at noon

  Joan of Arc’s statue

  When Jack arrives you have 10 seconds to give it to him

  Beau passes it to Juanita who passes it to Jordan as they sit in front of the bishop’s desk.

  Jordan asks if the bishop is logged into his computer. Yes.

  “I need to get the IP address from your server to trace.”

  “I have that.” Eskinde passes another sheet to Jordan. “We have computer techs on staff.”

  Beau stands, stretches, bored as hell.

  “The archbishop has not decided what to do about this.”

  Beau waves toward Jordan.

  “We’ll see what we come up from this email.”

  Juanita reads his body language and stands.

  “Anything else, Bishop?” Beau asks.

  “You seem … impatient this morning Chief Inspector.”

  “Frustrated. You need to agree to this and we’ll set up a trap.”

  “Don’t you think he’ll see you?”

  “We’re talking the middle of the French Quarter. Skinny streets. Unless he comes in a helicopter, we should be able to snatch anyone who picks up the money.”

  Beau nods to Jordan and the ATF man rises.

  On their way out, Jordan tells the bishop, “He’s in a bad mood.”

  Outside, Beau gives Jordan a long, cold look. “Don’t apologize for me again.”

  “OK.” Slight smile on the Jordan’s face. He looks to Juanita and her look is just as hard.

  Before they separate for their vehicles, Beau says, “The department’s elite unit wasting time on misdemeanors with a haughty, hard-headed victim.”

  “Extortion is a felony,” Juanita reminds Beau.

  LaStanza calls a half hour later. He and Beau have an appointment with Joseph P. Esposito, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI New Orleans Field Office.

  “I know Joe.”

  “You do?”

  “He’s a fan of Jessie.”

  “Fan of Lizette too. Ever since he went hot-tubbing with us in the Jacuzzi with naked Lizette.”

  IN THEIR OWN Jacuzzi, Jessie puts her arms up on the side, extends her legs and rises in the bubbling water. Her body glistens in the dim light streaming through the French doors from the kitchen. A light rain taps the aluminum overhang covering the Jacuzzi and most of the wooden deck. Beau leans over and kisses her erect nipples, rubs her belly, reaches under to rub her ass.

  Her eyes closed, she says, “When are we going to see your mother?”

  “I’m rubbing your naked ass in a hot tub and you’re thinking about my mother?”

  “I’m a woman. I’m complicated.”

  “Does this feel good. It feels good to me.”

  “Unlike a man, I can feel good and think of other things.”

  He leans over and suckles her breasts back and forth, sits next to her.

  “You think of things when we make love?”

  “I don’t think,” she says. “I just ride the pleasure. After, I think. What do you think of?”

  “Football,” Beau says, “if I want to slow it down, not come fast.”

  Jessie stands in the tub, sits up on the side of the Jacuzzi to cool off a minute. She leans back, closes her eyes again, lifts her chin and he watches that slick body.

  “You need to bring the new camera out here next time we do this.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Photograph my body while it’s still young and hot.”

  “You thinking of getting old quickly?”

  She opens her eyes. “Lizette has nudes of her body since she was fifteen. Giant collection. I started when I was sixteen. Man across Garfield Street from Lizette’s house. Professional photographer. When you want to see mine, I’ll show you.”

  Melbourne comes out from under the house, stands next to the deck and sniffs the air. Beau climbs out, goes into the kitchen for Cocoa Puffs and dry cat food. Stella watches him from atop the counter. He reaches into the treat box and drops three treats in front of her, goes out to feed the raccoon.

  Beau spots a face in a second story window in the house behind theirs. Mentions it to Jessie as he climbs back in the Jacuzzi.

  “That’s Mr. Barker. He’s 82-years old. He’s been peeking at me since we put in the Jacuzzi. I came out here after work before you came home, walked across the yard naked and called up to him. He opened his window and I told him if he saw anyone suspicious around our backyard to call 911 right away. I was followed from work by two thugs. He said he’d keep an eye out.”

  Later, in bed Jessie grabs his diamond-cutter dick as he feels up her breasts.

  “Hot tub always gets me hot,” she gas
ps.

  He makes love to her like a good Frenchman. With his tongue. Before they hump.

  JUANITA AND JORDAN are already there at 6 a.m., standing on the Esplanade Avenue neutral ground, firefighters just turning the hose down. White-gray smoke rises above the field stone spires of Archangel High School as Beau passes, pulls his SUV up on the neutral ground and parks between two oak trees, away from the old streetcar tracks.

  “Hey, you can’t park there!” This from a grinning uniform officer.

  “Fuck you.”

  A couple other cops who don’t recognize Beau glare at him as the grinning officer comes over to shake Beau’s hand. They can’t see Beau’s badge and weapon beneath the pale green dress shirt he wears with black rip-top trousers.

  “Been a while.”

  Sam Jeffries is a sergeant now, a short, squat man with a bulldog face. Juanita and Jordan join them.

  “Some stupid shit here,” goes Jeffries.

  They cross to the school. Jordon joining the firefighters. Most likely anxious to get to whatever was thrown at the wall, being an ATF man.

  Juanita puts her hair in a ponytail, opens her notebook, reads to Beau, “Call came in from woman next door. She heard the bottles crashing against the school wall.”

  Smoke still rises from the wall of the high school facing the distant lake and the fire-fighters turn up their hose to hit it again. The only windows on this side are twenty feet high and Jeffries says the obvious.

  Jeffries says, “If they really wanted to burn the place, they would have tossed it through windows. This wall is the gym wall.”

  A tall man in a white dress shirt and black pants comes up.

  “I am Brother Isaac, school Principal.”

  Juanita glances at Beau. “Christian Brothers.”

  Beau sticks out his hand to shake.

  “Chief Inspector Beau,” he says.

  The brother blinks. “As in Raven John Beau?”

  Juanita says, “John Raven Beau.”

  Beau nods until Juanita adds, “The Great Beau.”

  Beau tries to keep his face calm, says, “This is Inspector Juanita ‘I wanna be transferred soon’ Cruz.”

  “The brother’s residence is on the other side of the school,” goes Brother Isaac. “No one saw anything. You think it might be kids? Could have been worse if they threw it through windows.”

  “We were just saying that,” goes Sergeant Jeffries.

  “You know about the threats to the archdiocese?” Juanita says.

  “What threats?”

  Juanita explains and Brother Isaac looks from her to Beau to Jeffries and back again, opening his hands.

  “Not a word from the archdiocese. Archangel is not an archdiocesan school. We’re independent, like Jesuit and Holy Cross and De La Salle, another Christian Brothers high school. The archbishop schools are archdiocesan – Archbishop Rummel, Archbishop Chapelle, Shaw, Hannan.”

  Juanita taps Beau’s arm.

  “Maybe the vandals aren’t from town. Don’t know the difference.”

  Jordan comes over, says, “Molotov cocktails. Old school firebombs. Through the window we’d have had a conflagration of Biblical proportions.”

  Brother Isaac puts his fists against his hips.

  “Y’all don’t seem to be taking this seriously.”

  Juanita is quick with, “Not seriously? You got seven NOPD officers out here, including the entire elite CIU unit on a misdemeanor, Brother.”

  Beau thinks – My God. Juanita made a mistake. Arson is a felony.

  Beau tells Jeffries to handle the initial report and CIU will take the follow-up. Juanita and Jeffries and two officers canvass the area. Jordan stays with the fire department’s arson investigator while Brother Isaac takes Beau on a tour of the campus - four buildings made of field stone with a central quad with a huge live oak and two large magnolia trees, concrete benches.

  They go in the gymnasium first, the interior wall where the firebombing occurred outside sports a towering fresco of a knight on a black stallion, the knight in medieval armor, silver armor and helmet, a white tunic with a red cross and carrying a long sword. Above in large copperplate letters: Archangel Templars.

  “According to your online bio, you went to Catholic schools,” the Brother says.

  Beau nods.

  My online bio. Stefi at it again.

  The cafeteria is attached to the gym and Beau tells the brother there’s no need to see the inside of the classrooms, library or brother’s quarters.

  “I just wanted to show you the oldest high school in the city, established in 1799, before the American occupation.”

  “Occupation?”

  “Yes. The Christian Brother order is French and we have suffered Spanish rule here in New Orleans, as well as American rule, Confederate rule and American rule again. One day we shall be free of all occupation.”

  Back at the crime scene, Jordan draws Beau over to the wall away from the burned area where the firebomber signed his work:

  By Friday or else

  GC

  The GC with cat ears atop the ‘C’.

  THEY HAVE TO leave their weapons downstairs to go up to meet FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Joseph P. Esposito, in the super-secret-fortress New Orleans Field Office on the lakefront, Esposito’s office overlooking the gray-green water of Lake Pontchartrain.

  Esposito sits behind a massive desk. A tall woman stenographer sits behind a small table to his right. She’s middle-aged and wears a long dress and doesn’t look at them. Joe Esposito is a Vince Lombardi lookalike with a wide face, thick eye-brows and soft brown eyes, gotta be in his sixties and paunchy.

  “What’s this about a collection of Mafiosi?”

  Beau explains about the Incantos and the restaurant shooting, Lucy Incanto there and Nick Cataldo coming in the back door. He explains about the Raccontos following Jessie before he goes into the banking information – Incantos, Raccontos, Cavalcares and Cataldo.

  “Damn,” says Esposito.

  Beau’s not finished, filling in about the archdiocese extortion and greasycat1962 and Christo ‘Greasy Cat’ Maggio.

  Esposito sits back in his chair. “So, we either have a new confederation of Mafia families forming or a smoldering volcano about to erupt. Raccontos, Cavalcares, Incantos and the Badalamente Family we are now calling the Cataldo Family. This will either cement Nick Cataldo’s leadership or move him out.”

  LaStanza tells him about meeting with Nick.

  Esposito grins. “Nick talks to you guys? That’s unprecedented.”

  “He listens more than talks,” Beau says.

  “We will look at this new development but the Bureau is slow on matters like this unless there is terrorism involved. The only death is the armed robber, correct?”

  “A black cat as well.” Beau says this without expression.

  “A house cat?”

  “Could have been feral.”

  Esposito looks at LaStanza.

  “You two go to the same facial-expression coach?”

  “What facial expression?” – LaStanza.

  “The dead-pan look.”

  Both give him the dead-pan look.

  “Jesus.” Esposito takes a pack of Juicy Fruit gum from his desk drawer, pulls out a stick and offers gum to them. No takers.

  “So, how are Lizette and Jessie?”

  NICK CATALDO WAITS inside Café Degas just down Esplanade Avenue from Mystery Street and LaStanza’s office. The small café sits on a narrow triangle slice of land between the avenue and Ponce de Leon Street. Nick wanted to meet at another of his restaurants, in the quarter, but LaStanza told him it was his turn and Café Dugas is owned by the Louvier family.

  Beau and LaStanza breeze past two big men in black suits and blacked-out gangster sunglasses, LaStanza in jeans and the T-shirt he wore to the FBI office earlier, tan with dark blue print – CARRY THAT WEIGHT – from the Abbey Road album. Beau wears his khaki rip-stop tactical shirt over olive green rip-stop t
rousers. They have their guns back.

  Nick sits alone at a rear corner table with a wall behind him, his eyes following the two men approaching. A young waitress follows with menus and LaStanza tells her coffee-and-chicory for three. She takes the menus and they sit, saying nothing until the coffee’s brought and the waitress steps away. At four o’clock, the lunch crowd’s gone and the supper crowd not there yet so only two other tables are occupied in the small restaurant. Couples sitting up front, busy with their meals.

  The plan is for Beau to talk and LaStanza watch for Nick’s reactions.

  “Two Racconto family thugs, Alfredo Barantini and Carlo Vetulonia, were caught following a Louvier bank executive around town. We arrested them and took their guns away. Seems the Racconto family, the Cavalcare family, the Incanto family and you have been moving money into Louisiana banks.”

  LaStanza watches Nick’s eyes. The Cat is getting better at hiding his emotions but he’s not perfect. He tries to pretend this is no surprise when his eyes give him away. A slight narrowing.

  “This Greasy Cat extortionist vandalized Saint Louis Cathedral, firebombed a Catholic high school. He’s being sure not to cause too much damage.”

  Nick finally breathes and must realize he’s been holding his breath. He picks up his coffee with a steady hand and watches Beau.

  “The question is – are your families consolidating or are the others moving against you, Nick?”

  Beau sips his coffee. Waits.

  “Is there more?” – from Nick.

  Beau shakes his head and Nick takes another drink of coffee, stands, thanks them for the coffee.

  “Didn’t figure you’d talk to us,” goes LaStanza. “If we helped you with this information. Remember.”

  “Why?”

  LaStanza gets up. “Because we Sicilians always remember.”

  “Like the time you told me ‘Don’t let my alligator mouth overload my mockingbird ass’.”

  LaStanza chuckles.

  “After you asked me what’s it like being a fuckin’ gigolo and I told you, ‘It’s a good life, Nick. Seriously. Thanks for asking.’.”