Salvation Row - John Milton #6 (John Milton Thrillers) Page 16

“Izzy—”

  “You better tell me who you really are.”

  “A friend.”

  She shook her head. “No. That’s not good enough. I need to know what you do.”

  “Izzy—”

  “The way you dealt with those two guys. I spoke to Vinnie. He told me what you did. How you took them both out. He said that you’ve got to be police or something like that.”

  “I’m not police.”

  “Okay, you’re not police. So what are you? You either tell me, or I go to court on my own.”

  She was angry from what had happened to her, and he could see that the anger could very quickly be turned onto him if she thought that he was feeding her a line. He gripped the wheel a little tighter, looked dead ahead and clenched his teeth. “All right. I used to be a soldier.”

  “What kind of soldier?”

  “British Special Forces.”

  “What—?”

  “Have you heard of the SAS?”

  “Like Delta?”

  “Sort of like that.”

  “You saw action?”

  He nodded. “I served for twenty years before I got out.”

  “And since then?”

  He was convinced that she would see through his act, the lies that he was telling by omission. “I’ve been drifting around. I have money, I don’t need to work. I have no ties, no one to be responsible for. I’ve just been enjoying life. Seeing the world. I saw you on the TV, like I said. I thought you could do with some help.”

  He could see her reflection in the windshield, faint in the daylight. And he could see that she was still staring at him, unsatisfied.

  “What were you doing in New Orleans before? When we met, during Katrina?”

  “Business.”

  “Army business?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your friend? Mr. Penn?”

  “He was working with me.”

  “Jesus, John. You lied to me.”

  “We were on an anti-terrorist operation. He was in pursuit of the targets. They rammed him. It wasn’t an accident.”

  There was only so much that he could tell her, of course, and that would have to be enough.

  She repeated it, “You lied.”

  “How could I tell you? It was all classified. It’s still classified.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know, John.”

  “That’ll have to do, Izzy. I can’t say any more than that.”

  “You lied. To me and my family.”

  He didn’t let it pass a third time. “No, I didn’t. I was vague. I said that I was on business, and I was. I just didn’t say what my business was.”

  “You know what I mean. It’s the same thing.”

  “If you really think that, then I’m very sorry. But I’m here now. And I want to help. I can help.” He turned to glance at her. “You have to trust me, Izzy. I know that you’re not going to back down, and I know that they’re serious. You need someone to make sure they can’t get to you or to your family. And I can do that.”

  “Is there anything else? Anything at all?”

  He would be truthful, right up to the point where he couldn’t be. “There’s one more thing. My name isn’t Smith. It’s Milton.”

  “You’re joking?”

  “No.”

  “It is John, though? Or isn’t it? Is it something else?”

  “It’s John.”

  “Well, that’s something, I guess.”

  She turned away from him and stared out of the window. He took another quick glance and watched the muscles in her jaw as they clenched and unclenched. She was working out whether she could trust him. Whether she wanted to trust him.

  “All right,” she said. “But just so we’re straight from now on, no secrets and no lies. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Milton said.

  No secrets. No lies. That was a tall order, but, he determined, he would be as true to her as he could.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  JACKSON DUBOIS would much rather not have been involved, but Melvin and Chad had made a mess of a simple task before, and he didn’t want to take the chance that they would err for a second time. He had received a telephone call from Chalcroft’s man in the NOPD earlier that morning to tell him that Isadora Bartholomew had been released. That was an unfortunate development. Dubois had rather hoped that Isadora would be detained a little longer, preferably long enough for the lawyers to strike out her case against the city’s eminent domain proceedings. That hadn’t happened. Her preparation would have been disrupted, and that was good, but Joel had been very clear that the case could not be allowed to drag out. The odds of ensuring that didn’t happen were much better if she wasn’t there at all.

  Getting the mayor to involve the police was supposed to have solved things.

  It hadn’t.

  Annoying, but not irretrievable.

  Dubois liked to be prepared.

  There was always a Plan B.

  He was going to have to change things a little.

  His car was parked alongside the Industrial Canal, the watercourse that marked the western boundary of the Lower Ninth. The canal had been one of the first to be breached during the hurricane, pouring its waters into the streets around and about. The Army Corps of Engineers had restored the levee, but Dubois couldn’t help but think that what they had done could only ever be a Band-Aid. He would not have chosen to build a multimillion-dollar development on land that was forever at risk of flooding, but, he reminded himself, Joel had found his success by taking calculated gambles like this. He knew what he was doing, had demonstrated that over the course of his career a hundred times. Dubois wasn’t going to doubt him.

  Dubois looked into the rear-view mirror as Melvin Fryatt’s Lexus pulled up behind him. He pressed his two-hundred-dollar sunglasses onto his face, opened the car, and stepped out into the broiling sun.

  Fryatt lowered the window. “Morning, boss.”

  “You’re late.”

  “Traffic.”

  Dubois could smell the crack fumes through the open window. He doubted himself again. There were other men he could have hired for this job. But, he reminded himself, it should have been easy. It should have been child’s play. And these two degenerates, scum that he had scooped out of the septic tank of the city’s underworld, they would not be missed when the time came to finally rid himself of them.

  “How do you want us to do this?”

  “She’s at her place now. She’ll get changed, grab whatever she needs, and then she’ll head to the courthouse.”

  “Alright,” Melvin said. “So we go there now, pull her off the street, put her in the car, and take her out to the bayou. Easy.”

  “No,” Dubois said. “You’ve already messed this up once. I’m not going to give you a chance to mess it up again. And that’s too obvious. She’s with the English guy you met the other night. She’s probably going to have him with her all day.”

  “So?”

  “They’ll take North Claiborne. Even if she’s careful, runs through the streets to the north, she’s got to go over the bridge. You two wait on the other side on Poland Avenue. You wait for her car to come over.”

  “And then?”

  “Then you take care of her. Both of them.”

  #

  MILTON PARTED the curtains a little and looked out of the window. The street outside was clear in both directions.

  “John?”

  He turned. Izzy was making her way down the stairs. She had showered, and her hair was still damp. She had changed into a simple black dress and shoes with kitten heels. Her skin looked healthy and vibrant, and her eyes beamed with determination. She was not going to be daunted by Babineaux’s threats. That was good. Milton hated bullies, and he especially hated bullies who strong-armed people to do their bidding.

  But, he noted, her spunk made things trickier for him, too. She was headstrong and tenacious, and that meant it might be more difficult for him to persuade her to act with the circum
spection that would make it more difficult for them to get at her.

  “Did you speak to your parents?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And it wasn’t easy. They didn’t want to do it, but I think I persuaded them. I got two rooms at the Comfort Inn. They’re going to go over there this morning.”

  “Good. And are you ready?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I just need my case.”

  She went into her father’s study and returned with a lawyer’s case, the tendons in her arm bulging from its weight.

  Milton took it from her. It was heavy. “What’s in here?”

  “My files.” She smiled.

  Milton unlocked the door and went outside. He looked up and down the street. Still quiet.

  “What kind of files?” he said.

  “Case law. Precedents. Notes of what I want to say.”

  Milton wasn’t really listening. He wanted her to think he was relaxed enough to have a conversation, and he wanted her to talk so that she might forget how much danger she was in. Instead of listening, he was focusing on every little detail. The other houses. The cars parked on the street, simple enough to hide inside. The traffic passing at the junctions to the left and right. Everything looked normal. That didn’t mean Milton was prepared to relax.

  “Wait inside until I get the car started,” he said.

  “John—”

  “Wait.”

  He started down the path. He reached his car. He had been watching the street the whole time, but, just to be sure, he dropped down to his knees and craned his neck down, checking the underside, looking for something that shouldn’t be there. He had used magnetic mines himself, many times, and it would only have taken a moment for someone to fix one to the chassis and hurry away down the street. It all looked clear. He opened the door to the back and slid the case onto the seat. He shut the door and walked around the car to the driver’s side, vigilantly scanning up and down.

  Still nobody, at least no one that he could see.

  He fired up the engine and leaned across to open the passenger door. Izzy came out of the house, locked the door, and hurried down the path. She slid inside next to him and slammed the door. He released the brake and dabbed the accelerator. They started to roll away from the curb, Milton gradually increasing their speed, heading west.

  “You have a precedent that says they can’t do what they want to do?”

  He swivelled his head left and right.

  He checked the mirrors.

  Still nothing.

  “The law’s different from state to state. Louisiana is pretty good for them, but it’s not a slam dunk. Like I said, I just need to delay things as long as I can. It doesn’t cost me anything but time. Every time they send their team of lawyers down, it’s costing them thousands. It adds up, even for them.”

  “So what’s going to happen?”

  “This morning? I’m going to argue for an adjournment.”

  “On what basis?”

  She started to talk about unfair process, case law, legal principles that Milton did not understand and had little interest in. She was distracting herself, relaxing, which was exactly what he wanted. He made all the right noises as she spoke, but his attention was focussed outside.

  It was four and a half miles from Salvation Row to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal at 410 Royal Street. Milton’s smartphone suggested that they would have to pass to the west through the Lower Ninth Ward, cross the Industrial Canal via the bridge, and then follow the curve of the Mississippi. Google suggested that traffic was reasonable for this time of the day, and that the journey should take twenty minutes from point to point.

  Milton reached the corner of Caffin Avenue, slowed the car, looked left and right, and then pulled out again. They rolled through the grid of streets in the Lower Ninth, eerie and empty, the buildings flattened, with vegetation running wild. They reached the junction with North Claiborne Avenue. Milton knew that they would have to take the main road eventually, but it was the most obvious route, and he wanted to defer it for as long as he could. Instead of turning onto it, he swung right and followed North Derbigny Street. The street ran alongside the main drag, but was much quieter. They crossed Choctaw, Andry, Lizardi, Forstall, Reynes, and Tennessee. Milton slowed at the junction. Ahead of them were two more blocks, then a margin of waste ground covered with scrub and brush, and then, beyond, the levee that held back the canal. He swung the car to the south and followed Tennessee to the tall struts of the bridge. The on-ramp was located at the end of the street. He merged with the traffic and turned to the west again.

  The traffic began to build, slowing at the choke points. Milton began to feel uncomfortable. If the traffic jammed on the bridge, there would be no way for him to get off of it in the event that they were attacked. He glanced back in the mirror at the line of cars, jostling behind them.

  If they were being followed, if they stopped, if they became trapped, if, if, if…

  He looked ahead. The bridge offered two lanes, going east and west, and one of the lanes ahead was blocked. He could see the stream of traffic in the lane nearest to the edge was stopped, spilling around an obstacle. A breakdown? Something worse? Milton bullied his way into the other lane and, just like that, the traffic suddenly eased. Milton was able to accelerate to twenty. He glanced at a car that had rear-ended the one in front, causing the blockage. They were quickly onto the bridge and then they were across it, the morning sun flashing into the mirror as he looked back again.

  Izzy looked at her watch. “We’re going to make it.”

  “Of course. You better start thinking about what you’re going to say.”

  They came off the bridge, passing over the tangle of railroad lines that carried freight north and south. They moved on, the road fringed now with unkempt grass on the right and irregularly spaced palm trees and iron railings on the left. The junction with Poland Avenue was a wide crossroads, power and telecoms lines strung up overhead, with a broad arm suspending the traffic lights ahead of them. The lights were on red, and Milton slowed to a halt. They were four cars back, easily close enough to the lights to make it through when they next turned to green. Milton had a good view to the left and right. There was a series of one-storey buildings on the far side of the road, facing them. A wide space of open land to the right, an empty warehouse behind that, a realtor’s sign advertising OFFICE SPACE FOR LEASE. The traffic on Poland was lighter than on Claiborne. There was still a queue of perhaps thirty vehicles patiently filtering through the lights. There was a bus shelter. A group of people, dressed cheaply, waiting for their bus. Nothing that looked amiss.

  Milton started to think about what he was going to have to do next. He would stay with her for the moment, keep her out of harm’s way until he was able to formulate a plan to take the fight to the people who wanted her and the charity out of the Lower Ninth. He had some ideas about how he might do that, but it was going to take time to organise. A few days, maybe a week. He would have to guard her until then. Milton had been trained in bodyguarding during his time in the regiment. There had been assignments during his service in the Group when he had been deployed to protect rather than to kill. He remembered a month that he had spent in Iraq, working under the cover of an oilfield analyst, his purpose there really to guard the chief executive of British Petroleum against threats made on his life. There had been another assignment, nearer to the start of his career, when he had protected an arms dealer in Tokyo against the possibility of assassination by the Triads. You concentrated on the job, you acted proactively, you assumed the worst at all times.

  The lights went to green.

  The traffic pulled ahead.

  Milton allowed a small gap to grow between the second car and his Buick and then pressed down on the gas.

  The first and second cars passed by the grass verge that bisected the four lanes of Poland Avenue and continued along North Claiborne Avenue.

  Milton had turned his head to
the right, looking north, when he heard the roar of an engine revving. He turned his head to the left, too late, and saw the Lexus as it detached from the line of traffic and pelted at them. He punched the gas, just quick enough so that the Encore bolted ahead. The Lexus smashed into the offside rear wing with a grinding metallic screech, spinning the Buick around so that the car was facing south right down Poland Avenue, then north straight up it. The side airbags deployed, a whooshing detonation, the soft pillows expanding in an instant and blocking Milton’s view out of the left-hand side of the car. He saw Izzy thrown against the other side, the impact taken on her shoulder, her head just grazing the glass. The car came to a stop, pointing at the buildings on the side of the road farthest from the bridge and the canal.

  He knew at once that he was uninjured. The car had advanced just enough to spare him the impact that would probably have killed him. Izzy was most likely unhurt, too, but he had no time to check. He turned all the way around and looked over his right shoulder. The Lexus had bounced off with the impact and had plowed across the grass, smashing through the realtor’s sign. The front offside wing had taken the brunt of the impact, and was torn and folded inwards. Steam was pouring out of the radiator.

  The Buick had stalled in the crash. Milton reached for the ignition, his eyes still on the mirror as both front doors of the Lexus opened and two men got out. One black, one white. It was too far to make out details, and Milton didn’t have time to study them, but he knew who they were.

  “Milton!” Izzy gasped.

  The engine turned over, but didn’t start.

  He looked back in the mirror, saw that both men were jogging over to them.

  He saw pistols.

  Come on.

  “Milton—are you okay?”

  He turned the key again.

  The engine spluttered.

  He turned it again.

  Izzy turned, saw the men, and shrieked.

  Come on.

  The engine turned over, caught, and roared as Milton stood on the gas. The rubber gripped the asphalt, fresh glass spilling out of the smashed windows as it surged ahead and bounced over the curb. The sound of the first shot and the crunch as it bit into the chassis were almost simultaneous. The car changed up to second, the engine whining as it reached thirty. It handled badly, dragging to the left, but the impact seemed to have missed the wheel and, if the axle had been damaged, it wasn’t bad enough to prevent the car from moving.