12 Bullets Page 9

  Juanita and Jordan take the black SUV, Beau in the navy-blue one, both GMC Acadia Denali Secret Service models with souped-up engine, flat-resistant tires, heavy-duty brakes, a roll bar, bullet-deterrent windows, blue lights hidden in the grill and rear window, siren, interior and exterior cameras, GPS, Bluetooth, satellite Wi-Fi, iPad.

  “I’m at Canal Street,” Jessie tells Beau. “Stopped at the light. Caddy’s two cars behind.”

  It comes together after Jessie goes all the way to Esplanade on North Peters to come back up Decatur Street. Beau, coming down Saint Philip, cuts between Jessie’s blue Volvo and the black Escalade and stops, Juanita and Jordan stop right behind it and tap their siren before they get out with their new Suisse-Armes model DX1 .357 magnums.

  Jessie takes an illegal U-turn from Decatur back down North Peters, drives up on the banquette across the skinny street, takes her keys and purse and jumps out.

  The two men in the Escalade climb out with hands raised, the passenger facing Jordan, the driver looking at Beau who trains his magnum at the man moving into the center of the street. Beau tells him to kneel. The man begins to kneel before he jumps between two parked cars on narrow-single-lane Decatur Street and ducks into the coffee café that used to house Morning Call. The triangular building opens to Decatur on side and North Peters on the other side. Beau cuts between the coffee shop and the golden stature of Joan of Arc.

  The door of the coffee café bangs open and one of the big men in black rushes out as Jessie arrives at the door, her hand in her purse now gripping her Glock. She sticks out her leg and trips the big man who tries to keep upright, staggers, crashes head first into a light post with a loud crack.

  Beau comes around the front of the café, sees Jessie pointing her Glock at the big man on the pavement.

  “Police!” he shouts to the pain-in-the-ass innocent bystanders. The man is on his belly, starting to push himself up when Beau jams a knee into his back, gets an “Ouff.”

  The man collapses, face down and Beau holsters his weapon and handcuffs the man behind the back, searches and comes up with a Beretta in a holster and takes it out before standing. Jessie slips her Glock back into her purse.

  “Who the hell are these guys?”

  Beau leans over and locates a wallet in the man’s suit coat, yanks it out, finds a driver’s license.

  “Alfredo Barantini of Kansas City. 6’5”, 280, black hair and brown eyes. He’s thirty-five.”

  “I want my lawyer,” the man says.

  “Yeah. Yeah.”

  ATF SPECIAL AGENT Hillel Jordan babysits the men from the Escalade, Alfredo Barantini and 31-year old Carlo Vetulonia of North Kansas City, 6’2, 225, black hair brown eyes. The big men sit in the two holding cells at the First District Station on North Rampart Street. Jordan has his iPhone turned up, playing his soundtrack, songs in the background of his life. Smokey Robinson’s Crusin’ plays now.

  Lieutenant William Ashton looks through the arrest reports Beau gave him a minute earlier. Commander of the Intelligence Division, the sandy-haired lieutenant, who stands about 5’5”, thick-bodied now he’s in his 40s, shakes his head.

  Beau says, “I’m charging these ass-holes with 95 (illegal carrying of weapons), sending their guns to the LSP Crime Lab for comparison. Take about six months.”

  “Comparison?”

  Ashton’s been off the street too long.

  “Compare to any bullets or casings from any unsolved felonies.”

  “Oh. CSI stuff.” A little smile comes to Ashton’s wide face. Beau never met a cop who liked bullshit Hollywood shows like CSI.

  “They lawyered up?”

  “Yes,” goes Juanita. “Won’t speak to us. Won’t tell us who their lawyer is.” She shuffles through papers in front of her.

  “Towed their car. Inventory search revealed nothing. No suitcases. Nothing. It was rented in Kansas City, Kansas a week ago. Nothing on them but wallets and Berettas. Not even a cell phone.”

  “According to Kansas City PD, Barantini and Vetulonia belong to the Racconto Family. Cosa Nostra.”

  Beau feels his stomach churning. The Incantos and now the Raccontos.

  What the fuck is going on?

  FIVE PIZZAS SIT on Jessie’s dining room table as they sit – Stefi, Jessie, Beau, Juanita and Jordan. Beau scoops up a slice of meat lovers pizza and tells Jordan to turn off his soundtrack. Juanita shakes her head.

  Jordan pulls the ear bud from his left ear. “You can hear it?”

  “Superstition,” goes Juanita. “Stevie Wonder.”

  “Girl, you good with Motown.” Jordan pulls out the other ear bud and turns off the app on his iPhone.”

  Juanita takes a bite of Canadian bacon pizza, Jessie chews sausage pizza and Stefi chews her chicken and pepperoni pizza, the cats on either side of her chair as she feeds Scamp a piece of chicken. She feeds Stella another piece. Jordan takes a bite of everything pizza, a thick concoction of multiple toppings, tells Stefi how Motown music is the soundtrack running in the background of his life.

  “Everybody’s got a soundtrack.” He points at Juanita. “Hers is 60s pop music. Bubble gum pop like ‘Sugar Sugar, Dizzy, the flower girl in The Rain, The Park and Other Shit.”

  “Other Things,” Juanita corrects.

  “See.” Jordan grins. “She agrees. Beau’s is opera. Blood, drama, people swooning over each another, kissing, stabbing one another. Jessie’s is Barbra Streisand and Whitney Houston – greatest female voices ever.”

  Stefi goes, “What’s my soundtrack?”

  Jordan narrows an eye to her, says, “Been giving this a lotta thought. Led Zeppelin. Loud and rhythmic.”

  “But I don’t like Led Zeppelin.”

  “Change your life. Start obeying your parents.”

  She throws a pepperoni at him.

  Jordan extends a hand to Beau, palm up. “Pass me your cell phones. I’m going to load encrypted software so no one can locate your phone, get GPS coordinates. Same software the NSA uses to block people from locating classified cell phones.”

  Beau takes out his cell, unlocks it and passes it to the ATF man, who works it with one hand, thumb sliding across the iPhone’s face.

  “It’ll take a day or two for the anti-GPS devices to arrive for our vehicles. The SUVS and Jessie’s Volvo. I’ll install them in the glove compartments. It’s the size of a credit card. Anyone puts a GPS locator on your car, it’ll alert you via your iPhone.”

  He looks at Juanita, “About time we use some of our budget.”

  Beau picks up another slice of meat lovers. “Louvier, LLC is paying for Jessie’s bodyguards. I spoke with Alexandre Louvier.”

  “When?”

  Beau snickers at his girlfriend. “After the close call today …”

  “I don’t need bodyguards. I spotted them right away, didn’t I?”

  He gives her the expressionless stare.

  Stefi bounces in her chair again. “Tell me. Tell me. Spotted who?”

  Beau turns the blank warrior stare to her. “I’m taking you home after supper.”

  “What?”

  “No discussion. Two men tried to follow your sister home from work today. Bad guys.”

  “Don’t you think I’ll be safer with you?

  “You’ll be safer as far away from us as you can be right now.”

  “I’m not going.”

  Beau looks at her as if he’s looking through the sights of a gun. His voice is soft and deep at the same time, “These men killed a cat. You want Scamp safe, don’t you?”

  Stefi picks up a slice of pepperoni pizza, bites it, keeps staring back into Beau’s deadpan eyes.

  “Never seen you like this.”

  “Neither has the Mafia. They’re about to.” He looks at the others. “I’m bringing in Nick Cataldo. Letting him know he’s responsible for all these goombas in town and he’s got a bigger problem than that.”

  “What?” Juanita asks.

  Beau eats some pizza before. “Me. Because I’m
on the warpath now.”

  “Count me in,” goes Jordan.

  Juanita smiles.

  “Don’t misplace your phone,” Jordan says when he hands Jessie her phone, “because FIND MY iPHONE app won’t work now.”

  LATER, IN BED Jessie tells Beau, “Maybe you shouldn’t bring in Cataldo. Talk with Dino. Sicilians know to never let anyone outside the family know what they’re thinking. Don’t telegraph your punch.”

  He shakes his head.

  She’s not finished. “Why not tell Nick what’s up? He may not know about these Raccontos. Maybe don’t tell him he’s responsible. Just tell him you’re on the warpath. No threat. Just the fact. He’ll handle the goombas. He will or perish. That’s the way of Sicilians.”

  “That is not the way of the Sioux.”

  Jessie laughs, tightens her jaw.

  “What is the way of a stone-age tribe famous only for their bravery and defiance against the greatest odds? Like a crawfish raising its claws to an oncoming train.”

  He sees the set of her jaw. Thinks about it.

  “You might be right. Our way is also to be patient, be ready to strike when the enemy least expects it. Wait for the enemy to make a mistake because they always do.”

  “Like the men in Paris.”

  “Exactly.”

  HE WAKES JUST after 3 a.m., goes down to talk to Blue Swan.

  He sits on the edge of the deck, sees the bowl he’d left for Melbourne is empty, places his magnum and iPhone next to his side. A slight breeze brushes the tree leaves. He answers in a soft voice.

  “Time comes when warriors dance around a fire and chant to the souls in the Twelve Heavens, telling them the warriors may come to them soon, the path to war is taken and it may be a good day to die, as Crazy Horse said before The Battle of the Greasy Grass, the battle the white eyes call Custer’s Last Stand, The Battle of the Little Big Horn.

  “I am on a warpath, Blue Swan, but I do not think I will see you soon.

  “I live among the white eyes and my enemy this time may be the most ruthless of the white eyes, men who came from dusty hills of an island of recurring death, an island that hardens men into the most lethal killers. I’ll match myself against them if it comes to it.”

  Beau turns his face to the heavens, smiles.

  “No, I will not see you yet. If we go to battle, I will send my enemies to their hell for I am Sharp Eyes of the Oglala Sioux. The blood of Crazy Horse courses through my veins.”

  Cocky. Beau knows. Arrogant. Maybe.

  THE BLACK GMC SUV following Jessie this morning isn’t as big as Beau’s Denali and the driver’s not trying to hide like the men yesterday. Her new bodyguard Ferdie Leob, of the infamous Leopold and Loeb NOPD partnership sits in the SUV in his dark sunglasses. Another big guy, Loeb is now an attorney-private investigator-bodyguard. Retired NOPD, Loeb’s personal history includes a penchant for unnecessary violence and an expert marksman.

  Goofy Loeb catches two red lights on the way downtown so Jessie has to pull over and wait for him. Following her on foot from the parking garage to the front of her building, he wolf-whistles and she immediately steps into the doorway of Magnifique Boutique and reaches for her Glock. Leob hurries up, looks around and says, “What?”

  “Was that a signal? The whistle?”

  “It was a distraction, in case anyone thought I was with you, I gave you the wolf-whistle like a jerk. You looking good in that silver suit.”

  She knuckles his chest and walks around him.

  Mr. Jefferson stands just inside the door as she walks in.

  “He’s back.”

  Jessie nods as she spots Lord Palmer in a different pin-striped suit this one dark green with beige stripes. He stiffens as she approaches, nods.

  “Good morning, ma’am.”

  “Good morning.” She almost said, ‘your lordship’ but she’s in no mood to coddle this fool.

  “I came to thank you. You are the only person who does not treat me as an escapee from a lunatic asylum.”

  Jessie grits her teeth and tries to smile.

  “I went to the British Counsel yesterday. No one believes I came from 1920 to warn about a second world war. They think I’m crazy because there was a second world war. Why did you not tell me when I first broached the subject?

  He gives her a sad smile.

  “You thought me crazy as well. It has taken the last days to realize you are unable to tell who is crazy because everyone is insane in this century. Watching television. I am so depressed.

  “What did all those lads at Ypres, the Somme, Verdun, what did they die for? Certainly not to have a century like this one. Is it this bad in the United Kingdom? Do people kill each other in England with impunity like I witness every evening on television?”

  Jessie glances at Mr. Jefferson who just shrugs.

  The lord is not finished, “I am leaving. I was going to travel further in time but I fear I shall run into the Elio and Morlocks as H. G. Wells predicted. I am despondent. Should I go back in time to prevent the first world war? The cousins who started the war will not listen to anyone. Damn Kaiser Wilhelm, King George V and Czar Nicholas. I thought, perhaps, if I assassinated them but I have never fired a gun in my life. Have you fired a gun?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  She’s about to tell him she was a private eye but ops for, “Think of England and you think of tea. Think of Americans and think – guns.”

  He nods, extends a hand to shake.

  “I shall be off.”

  She has to ask how does he travel through time.

  “A time machine.”

  Of course.

  She realizes she’s been staring at his eyes. When she was a teenager, she went out with a boy from Archbishop Rummel High School and his track uniform was the school colors – crimson, white and baby blue, which she was told, empathically, was not baby blue, but Columbian blue. This time traveler has Columbian blue eyes.

  “Where is this time machine? In your hotel room? In your pocket, like a watch?”

  Lord Palmer touches the side of his head.

  “Did not even know I had the ability until recently.”

  Mr. Jefferson backs away, leaving a faint snickering in his wake.

  “You just think of a year and you’re there?”

  “It is more complicated, yet my mind works like a machine when I ask. I am AH. An Advanced Human. We evolved differently from you homo-sapiens.”

  Why am I listening to this guy?

  Lord Palmer backs toward the door.

  He stops before leaving.

  “Are you going into the past or future?”

  He shrugs.

  “With your permission, I shall send you a message when I reach my next destination, Miss Carini.” He smiles for the first time, turns and leaves, putting his bowler on after he steps through the glass doors.

  What an odd duck. Good looking. Polite. Clean.

  Jessie heads to the elevator, wondering if she’ll hear from this guy again.

  In her office, she takes off her suit jacket, hangs it and turns on her iMac and the column computer boots up quickly, the 27” screen coming on quickly, programs alerting her to nine emails, three messages, and two updates that automatically start after five seconds since she didn’t stop them. She logs into the LA Bank secure program, sees Lord Palmer’s account. Marks the account, instructing the computer to alert her to any activity on this account.

  Later, she checks the Cavalcare’s Vespa and Puntura accounts and Nick Cataldo’s Gatto account and the personal account of L. G. Incanto. No activity except collecting interest. She marks the accounts to alert her to any action there as well. She goes over all actions on those accounts and every one has deposits and interest. They are stashing money in her bank.

  She checks out the other two Louisiana banks owned by Louvier, LLC, and discovers several of the same activity for Alveare, LLC, the Cavalcare family’s holding company in Miami and $3 million from a Kansas
City Company, Fattorino, LLC. It takes her a half hour to traces the ownership of Fattorino (which means ‘deliveryman’) to the Racconto Family.

  She leans back in her chair and thinks of what she can do to fuck with these gangsters without them discovering who’s fucking with them. For the moment, she’ll just monitor the accounts.

  BEAU WAITS UNTIL Juanita Cruz and Hillel Jordan sit at the long conference table in the offices of Mystery, Inc. – LaStanza’s private eye firm on Mystery Street near City Park.

  “Turn it off,” Beau tells Jordan, who brushes the face of his iPhone, pulls the earbuds from his ears.

  Juanita tells him, “My Girl, The Temptations.”

  Jordan explains to the others about the soundtrack running in the background of everyone’s life. LaStanza sits there in jeans and another Beatles T-shirt, this one dark red with white printing: THE FOOL ON THE HILL. James Leopold wears his usual navy-blue suit and Felicity Jones, a buff African-American with a smile on his face, wears a black shirt over black 511 rip-stop trousers. Stan-the-Man Smith in a white suit with a silver tie, his blond hair slicked back.

  “You look like a tampon,” LaStanza tells Stan as they settle.

  “Your soundtrack,” Felicity Jones tells LaStanza, “gotta be the Beatles.”

  “Got that right,” goes LaStanza. “And the Blues. The Thrill is Gone. BB King. Bill Withers. New Orleans stuff written by Alizée Diluviennes and Alan Toussaint.”

  “Blues? What you got to be blue about, married to a rich princess more beautiful than Jessie, which is fuckin’ hard to do.”

  LaStanza shakes his head. “The Blues, man. Reminds you the world ain’t all pretty women and princesses.”

  Fel opens his notebook. “My soundtrack would be Santana. Zeppelin. Pink Floyd. Emerson, Lake and Palmer.”

  Which reminds Beau of Lord Palmer, but he doesn’t mention it.

  The three CIUs wear white dress shirts over black rip-stops. Juanita’s rip-stop snug skirt four inches above her knees. No stockings, her dark Cuban-Costa Rican skin is tan enough. Like Beau and Jordan, she wears black Skechers running shoes.

  Beau begins slowly, going over the case, starting with the emails and vandalisms, the Greasy Cat moniker, through the Mafiosi, the Incantos at Bontonomo’s Restaurant up to the Racconto thugs following Jessie.