John Connolly - Every Dead Thing

After two or three minutes a converted golf cart came from behind the house and hummed down the oak-lined avenue toward us. Three men in chinos and sports shirts stepped from it. They made no attempt to hide their Steyr machine pistols.

“Hi,” I said. “We’re here to see Joe Bones.”

“There ain’t no Joe Bones here,” said one of the men. He was tanned and short, no more than five-six. His hair was braided tightly against his scalp, giving him a reptilian appearance.

“How about Mr. Joseph Bonanno, is he there?”

“What are you, cops?”

“We’re concerned citizens. We were hoping Mr. Bones would make a donation to the David Fontenot funeral fund.”

“He already gave,” said the guy by the golf cart, a fatter version of the Lizard Man. His colleagues at the gate laughed fit to burst a gut.

I moved closer to the gate. Lizard Man’s gun came up quickly.

“Tell Joe Bones that Charlie Parker is here, that I was in the Aguillard house on Sunday night, and that I’m looking for Remarr. You think funny man back there can remember all that?”

He stepped back from the gate and, without taking his eyes off us, relayed what I had said to the guy by the golf cart. He took a walkie-talkie from the rear seat, spoke into it for a moment, and then nodded at Lizard Man. “He says let ’em through, Ricky.”

“Okay,” said Ricky, taking a remote signaler from his pocket, “step back from the gate, turn around, and put your hands against the car. You packing, then tell me now. I find anything you haven’t told me about, I put a bullet in your head and feed you to the ’gators.”

We owned up to a Smith & Wesson and a SIG between us. Louis threw in an ankle knife for good measure. We left the car at the gate and walked behind the golf cart toward the house. One man sat in the back with his pistol pointing at us while Ricky walked behind us.

As we neared the lawn I could smell shrimp and chicken cooking on the barbecue. An iron table held an assortment of spirits and glasses. Abita and Heineken lay in a steel cooler packed with ice.

From the side of the house came a low growl, deep with viciousness and menace. At the end of a strong chain, which was anchored to a bolt set in concrete, was a huge animal. It had the thick coat of a wolf, flecked with the coloring of an Alsatian. Its eyes were bright and intelligent, which rendered its obvious savagery all the more threatening. It looked like it weighed at least one hundred and eighty pounds. Each time it tugged at its chain, it threatened to wrench the bolt from the ground.

I noticed that it seemed to be directing most of its attention at Louis. Its eyes focused on him intently and at one point it raised itself up on its hind legs in its efforts to strike at him. Louis looked at it with the detached interest of a scientist finding a curious new type of bacteria growing in his Petri dish.

Joe Bones speared a piece of spiced chicken with a fork and placed it on a china plate. He was only slightly taller than Ricky, with long dark hair swept back from his forehead. His nose had been broken at least once and a small scar twisted his upper lip on the left side. His white shirt was open to the waist and hung over a pair of Lycra running shorts. His stomach was hard and muscular, his chest and arms slightly overdeveloped for a man of his height. He looked mean and intelligent, like the animal on the chain, which probably explained how he had lasted for ten years at the top of the heap in New Orleans.

He placed some tomatoes, lettuce, and cold rice mixed with peppers beside the chicken and handed the plate to a woman seated nearby. She was older than Joe, I guessed, probably in her early or mid-forties. There was no darkness at her blond roots and she wore little or no makeup, although her eyes were obscured by a pair of Wayfarers. She wore a short-sleeved silk robe over a white blouse and white shorts. Like Joe Bones, she was barefoot. To one side of them stood two more men in shirts and chinos, each armed with a machine pistol. I counted two more on the balcony and one sitting beside the main door to the house.

“You want something to eat?” asked Joe Bones. His voice was low, with only a faint trace of Louisiana in it. He looked at me until I responded.

“No, thanks,” I said. I noticed that he didn’t offer any to Louis. I think Louis noticed too.

Joe Bones helped himself to some shrimp and salad, then motioned to the two guards to help themselves to what was left. They took turns to do so, each eating a breast of chicken with his fingers.

“Those Aguillard murders. A terrible thing,” said Joe Bones. He waved me toward the only empty seat left after he sat down. I exchanged a look with Louis, shrugged, and sat.

“Excuse me for presuming on an intimacy with you,” he continued, “but I hear that the same man may have been responsible for the deaths of your family.” He smiled almost sympathetically. “A terrible thing,” he repeated. “A terrible thing.”

I held his gaze. “You’re well informed about my past.”

“When someone new comes to town and starts finding bodies in trees, I like to make it my business to find out about them. They might be good company.” He picked a piece of shrimp from his plate and examined it briefly before starting to eat.

“I understand you had an interest in purchasing the Aguillards’ land,” I said.

Joe Bones sucked at the shrimp and placed the tail carefully to one side of his plate before responding. “I have a lot of interests, and that wasn’t Aguillard land. Just because some senile fuck decides to make up for a bad life by slipping land to the niggers doesn’t make it nigger land.” He spat the word “nigger” each time. His shell of courtesy had proved remarkably fragile and he seemed intent upon deliberately provoking Louis. It was an unwise course of action, even with guns around him.

“It seems that one of your men, Tony Remarr, may have been in the house the night that the Aguillards died. We’d be interested in talking to him.”

“Tony Remarr is no longer part of my operation,” said Joe Bones, returning to his formal mode of speech after the burst of profanity. “We agreed a mutual parting of the ways and I haven’t seen him in weeks. I had no idea he was in the Aguillard house until the police told me.”

He smiled at me. I smiled back.

“Did Remarr have anything to do with David Fontenot’s death?”

Joe Bones’s jaw tensed but he kept smiling. “I have no idea. I heard about David Fontenot on the news this morning.”

“Another terrible thing?” I suggested.

“The loss of a young life is always terrible,” he responded. “Look, I’m sorry about your wife and kid, I truly am, but I can’t help you. And frankly, now you’re getting rude, so I’d like you to take your nigger and get the fuck off my property.”

The muscles in Louis’s neck rippled, the only sign he gave that he had heard Joe Bones. Joe Bones leered at him, picked up a piece of chicken, and tossed it toward the beast on the chain. It ignored the tidbit until his owner snapped his fingers, when it fell on the chicken and devoured it in a single bite.

“You know what that is?” asked Joe Bones. He spoke to me, but his body language was directed at Louis. It expressed utter contempt. When I didn’t respond, he continued.

“It’s called a boerbul. A man named Peter Geertschen, a German, developed it for the army and antiriot squads in South Africa by crossing a Russian wolf with an Alsatian. It’s a white man’s watchdog. It sniffs out niggers.” He turned his gaze on Louis and smiled.

“Careful,” I said. “He might get confused and turn on you.” Joe Bones jerked in his chair as if he had been hit by a jolt of electricity. His eyes narrowed and searched my face for any indication that I was aware of a double meaning in what I had said. I stared right back at him.