Jeff Abbott - Black Joint Point

‘It’s gonna be okay,’ he said, patting her. ‘I sure don’t have a thing against him.’

She stiffened under his hand. ‘So now what?’

‘Alex might be a problem. Not just for me. For you. Or for your boyfriend,’ he said. He had to be careful, not panic her overmuch. She might crack and run to Whit or to the police, even if it cost her everything. He ran a thumb along her shoulder blade.

She shrugged his hand off.

‘Sorry, just trying to be a help.’ He leaned back. ‘I know you’re upset – you got every right.’

‘I don’t want you to ever touch me, Stoney. You understand?’

‘Sure, Lucy.’

‘I love Whit.’

‘I know you do. I’m sorry. I’m just trying to be a friend.’

‘You let Alex kill my uncle and Thuy and you want to be my friend?’

‘I couldn’t stop him,’ he said and then he had an idea, not a bad one at all, to solve his problems. It might work. ‘Lucy. That gum. You really know how to use it?’

She narrowed her gaze. ‘Why?’

‘Like I said, Alex might be a problem.’

‘You said you need him for the fake dig.’

‘Sure. But he’s gotten real unpredictable. Maybe if he doesn’t want to do the fake dig on your land, just wants to take off, well, he might decide to hurt me. Or you, if he finds out someone else has the Devil’s Eye. And he knows Whit talked to me. He might hurt Whit. I don’t know.’

She stared. ‘You want me to shoot Alex.’

‘I want us to be careful, sweetheart. We get through this, we both get what we want. You get your money, you get out of your debts, you get Whit.’

‘I don’t know I want to sell you my land anymore, Stoney. And I think I have Whit-’

‘Until he finds out about what you’ve done. Then he’ll be gone, Lucy.’

‘I want out. This isn’t what I signed on for, Stoney.’

‘Can’t, Lucy. Train left the station.’ He went back to the couch, smiled at her, thinking, And I will fucking touch you when I please when all this is done. ‘I’m not suggesting you kill Alex, Lucy. Clearly not. Just want you to be careful. I mean, he thinks Whit’s a threat to him, he’s going to come after him. We’re kind of pretending that I’ve been kidnapped right now-’

‘What?’

‘Just calm down. I don’t want to go into the why. But the last person who saw me was your boyfriend. Alex considers him a threat.’

Lucy stared at the gun in her lap.

‘You know how to use it?’ he asked again.

‘Patch showed me,’ she said. ‘When I was a lot younger.’

‘Alex is staying at a little motel on the outskirts of Port Leo. The Sandspot. You know it?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Room 133.’

She didn’t say anything, looked down at her fingers closed around the gun.

‘Well, now you know where he’s at, sweetheart,’ Stoney said. ‘The rest is up to you.’

The little prostitute was sitting on the flying bridge of Don’t Ask, munching an apple, apparently enjoying the late-afternoon breeze and the shade.

‘Where’s Gooch?’ Whit called as he came aboard.

‘He said he had to hunt down someone,’ Helen Dupuy said.

Hunt down. Not a good sign. ‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. He said he’d call in a bit. He said it was okay for me to be here.’

She had decided he was an enemy. He sat next to her, kicked his sandals off. ‘I’m sure it is. You’re his guest.’

She finished her apple, wiped her hands.

‘Do you normally get on planes with men you barely know?’

‘That’s a really stupid question,’ she said. She seemed a little less intimidated by him out of the robe. ‘What do you think?’

‘You’re either very trusting or you’re very naive or-’

‘Or maybe I just want to help Gooch get the guy who hurt me.’

‘Okay.’

‘You think I’m not good enough to be his friend. I can tell he told you what I do. You changed the way you look at me.’

‘Gooch has the widest range of friends of anyone I’ve ever known.’

‘He’s nice. Really nice.’

‘When he wants to be. Don’t get on his bad side.’

‘I bet I seen more bad sides than you have.’

‘So how long are you staying?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t have to rush back.’

‘You don’t have a pimp?’

‘I have a manager. Gooch explained to him I had a civic duty to come help.’

‘Oh, Lord.’

‘I’m not a streetwalker,’ she said. She drank from a glass of water. ‘I got a regular clientele. Blue-collar guys. Most of ’em aren’t even married.. They just can’t afford to spend a ton of money buying drinks for stuck-up girls who won’t give ’em none.’

‘More civic duty.’

‘You want my help or should I just leave now?’

‘I want your help, Helen.’

‘We talked with Jason Salinger. He didn’t have a photo, but my description of Albert and his of Allen Eck are both pretty much dead-on, except for Albert having black hair and Allen having brown. Both of ’em got a little part-moon scar on the corner of their mouths.’

‘How did you explain to Jason what you wanted to know?’

‘Just told him I was your secretary and you needed some more questions answered,.’ And like she was his secretary, she handed him a file. ‘Here. Gooch and I got on his laptop and went into the back issues site for the Times-Picayune. We looked up all the crime stories from between June first and June fourth. And a couple of days each way past that. Gooch said you’d be interested in the top story.’

As he started reading she gave him a summary. ‘Some rich guy up off St Charles named Danny Mouton. But he goes by the name Danny Laffite, claims to be descended from Jean Laffite – got a history of mental problems, it says. Someone killed his cousin, who was staying at his house. Single shot through the forehead, close range. They don’t say the caliber in the paper.’

Like Thuy Tran.

‘Was this Danny Laffite a suspect?’ Jason Salinger had mentioned Danny Laffite, too, the supposed forger kicked out of the Laffite League.

‘Nope. Visiting relatives in South Carolina at the time. Place was vandalized pretty heavily, apparently a TV, a VCR missing. A burglar. But Danny Laffite seems to have dropped out of sight afterward.’

‘No arrests made?’ He scanned the rest of the article, and a brief follow-up that was more about the checkered career of Danny Laffite than about the poor cousin, whose name was Phillip Villars.

‘No. We printed out all the stories about homicides – there’s always more in the summer in New Orleans – but Gooch said he thought only this one mattered.’ She sipped her water. ‘Gooch says Alex – that’s what I’m calling him now – is a treasure hunter, y’all think, and might have a connection to this Danny Laffite guy.’

‘Possibly a loose one. They have a mutual acquaintance named Stoney Vaughn.’

‘So that call Alex got, that he’d offed the wrong guy? Maybe Danny Laffite was supposed to get killed, not his cousin.’

‘Would you hand me the phone, please?’ Whit said.

He dialed 411, asked for a New Orleans listing for Daniel Mouton on First Street. A message said the phone had been disconnected. He clicked off.

A hazy shape was starting to form. But with Jimmy Bird dead by his own hand, would David or anyone else give a crap?

‘I’m going below and taking a nap,’ Helen said. ‘I had a long night and a long day and I’m tired.’

‘Helen, thank you.’ He hesitated. ‘I want you to know I don’t have a thing in the world against you.’

Helen Dupuy stood. ‘I’m real aware I’m not good enough for Gooch. I know it. He doesn’t. Maybe you could let me have a couple of nice days before he sees it and gives me a plane ticket home.’ Then she went belowdecks.