Kathy Reichs - Bones to Ashes

“Nineteen twenty to 1933. Republican and Prohibition parties jumped in bed with the Temperance Movement.” Hippo gave a half grin. “That where you got your name?”

“No.”

“But you’re a Pepsi hugger, right?”

“Diet Coke. Back to Bastarache.”

“As you will recall from your history lessons, some politicos and Bible thumpers may have taken the pledge, but a great many Americans did not. Familiar with Saint-Pierre et Miquelon?”

Lying south of Newfoundland, the little island cluster is the last remnant of the former colonial territory of New France. Essentially under French control since 1763, a 2003 constitutional reform changed its status from territorial collective to oversees region, like Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean, French Guiana in South America, and Réunion in the Indian Ocean. With its own postal stamps, flag, coat of arms, and sixty-three hundred fiercely Francophile souls, Saint-Pierre et Miquelon is the Frenchest of French outposts in North America.

I nodded.

“Americans still wanted their cocktails, and the French didn’t give a rat’s ass about Prohibition, so Saint-Pierre et Miquelon stepped up to the plate. In the twenties, the place was awash with booze. I ain’t just talking Canadian whiskey. Champagne from France. West Indian rum. British gin. And all that hooch needed distribution. That meant good times for many small villages in Atlantic Canada.”

Hippo misread my impatience for disapproval.

“A man could make more running one load of booze than he could freezing his ass all year in a fishing boat. What would you choose? Anyway, right or wrong, booze flowed down the eastern seaboard and into Rum Row.”

Hippo gave me a questioning look. I nodded again. I’d also heard of Rum Row, the flotilla of ships anchored beyond the three-mile limit off the U.S. East Coast, waiting to offload liquor for entrepreneurs such as Al Capone and Bill McCoy.

“You know the outcome. Twenty-first Amendment pulled the plug on Prohibition, but Uncle Sam taxed booze up the wazoo. So smuggling continued. Eventually, the States and Canada independently declared war on the Atlantic rumrunners. Ever hear the Lennie Gallant song about the Nellie J. Banks ?”

“Maybe at Hurley’s.”

“The Nellie J. Banks was Prince Edward Island’s most notorious rumrunner. Also her last. Boat was seized in thirty-eight. Ballad tells the story.”

Hippo’s eyes wandered to a spot over my shoulder. For one awful moment I thought he was going to sing. Mercifully, he continued talking.

“The RCMP and Canada Customs still got their hands full. But it’s not like the old days. The slimeballs working the coast now mostly deal in drugs and illegal immigrants.”

“Your knowledge is impressive.”

Hippo shrugged. “Rumrunners are kind of a hobby. I’ve read up.”

“This has something to do with Obéline’s husband?”

“Yes. I’m getting to that. Hilaire Bastarache was second in line. Wanting to up the profits, after World War II, he added a new wrinkle.”

“Not smuggling.”

Hippo shook his head. “The skin trade. Titty bars. Whorehouses. Massage parlors. Proved very lucrative.

“David, the third in line, is a strange duck, kind of a cross between Howard Hughes and some sort of urban militiaman. Keeps to himself. Distrusts anything having to do with government or its institutions. Schools. Military. Health care. Guy’s never registered for social security, Medicare, voting. Was hit by a truck once. Refused to be taken to the hospital. And, of course, cops. Bastarache especially hates cops.”

“I can see why someone in vice would be wary of the police, but why the paranoia about authority in general?”

“Part of the blame goes to Daddy. Little David was homeschooled, kept on a very short leash for a very long time. Hilaire Bastarache wasn’t what you’d call gregarious. But it goes deeper than that. When the kid was ten he saw his mother gunned down in a botched raid on one of the old man’s warehouses.”

“Was she armed?”

Hippo shook his head. “Wrong place wrong time. Ruby Ridge kind of thing.”

Hippo referred to the 1992 siege of an Idaho cabin by U.S. Marshals. During the incident, an FBI sniper shot and killed a woman while she was holding her ten-month-old son.

“Despite his hang-ups, Bastarache manages to take care of business. Keeps himself insulated with layers of hired muscle. Granddaddy’s establishment in Caraquet got busted several years back. The current Bastarache hadn’t a clue the place was being used as a cathouse. Thought he was renting rooms to upstanding young women.” Hippo snorted derisively. “The court bought it. Prossie named Estelle Faget took the fall.

“Bastarache owns a strip club in Moncton off Highway 106. Le Chat Rouge. Shifted his base there in 2001. But I understand he’s spending a lot of time in Quebec City these days. Has a bar there called Le Passage Noir.”

“Why the relocation?”

“Got caught nailing a stripper. Turned out the kid was sixteen. Bastarache decided it was in his interest to leave Tracadie.”

“Christ.” My voice dripped with disgust.

Hippo pulled a folded paper from his pocket. When I reached out, he pressed it to the tabletop.

“My sources say Bastarache doesn’t payroll choirboys.” Hippo’s eyes locked onto mine. “Word on the street is his enforcers play very rough.”

“Real stud,” I snorted. “Cheating on his wife with a bubble-gummer.”

“Let me share a story. Guy named Thibault sold Bastarache a car back in ninety-seven. Bastarache complained the crankshaft was bad. Guy blew him off. Three days later, a body turned up under the Little Tracadie River Bridge No. 15. Had a crankshaft protruding from his rib cage.”

“Was Bastarache charged?”

“There was nothing to link him and no one would roll.”

“Could be coincidence.”

“Could be I’ll get drafted to play fullback for the Alouettes. Look, what I’m saying is, Bastarache is nuts, he’s mean, and he runs a rough crew. That’s a bad combination.”

I couldn’t disagree with that.

But why would Obéline have married such a loser? And why had he chosen her ? What had happened to the little girl I’d known on Pawleys Island?

Hippo’s eyes dropped. Scooping up the folded paper, he began rotating it from corner to corner, tapping the tabletop.

“I got another story.”

I started to interrupt.

“Concerns your friend.”

The change in Hippo’s voice chilled me.

“Plot’s not original. Fighting. Husband getting liberal with the fists. Anonymous calls to the cops. Wife refusing to press charges. Finally, him breaking her arm. She’s in a cast, he’s slipping it to a pole dancer.”

“Obéline?”

Hippo nodded. “Unclear how she got him out of the house. May have threatened to prosecute this time if he didn’t leave. Two weeks later there’s a fire.”

I swallowed.

“Third-degree burns over twenty percent of her body. Spent time in rehab. Came away pretty scarred.”

I pictured a peach-skinned toddler with chestnut curls laughing and chasing gulls in the Carolina surf.

On the medial surface of the mammalian brain, right beneath the cortex, there’s a nexus of neurons called the limbic system. This little hunk of gray matter cranks our emotions in and out of gear: wrath, fright, passion, love, hate, joy, sadness.

A limbic switch flipped, and white hotness seared my endocranium. I didn’t let my anger show. That’s not how I am. When that circuit trips, and true fury blasts the inside of my skull, I don’t scream or lash out. Au contraire. I go steely calm.

“Arson?” My voice was a monotone.