Mr. CEO(89)

I could use my tools to continue running the backtrace, but I don't need to. It'd be easier just to get Andrea's phone number if I really want or need to contact her again. I've had access to that particular database for years. Instead, I go back to my workout, not letting myself get distracted. I've still got three hundred pushups to do, and then I'll go into my form training. Without a lot of partners, I have to keep my skills up as best I can, and that means lots and lots of mental imagery while I drill on poor substitutes for real people.

I wonder if Andrea can be a resource? There are so many things I can't verify yet, the things that can really take my campaign against Peter DeLaCoeur from just harassment to putting him behind bars. Not that I want it to stop there, but it's a start. The dirty cops, the mob connections, the bodies dropped off in the swamps or somewhere in the Mississippi... if I can verify those, I can really put the pressure on him. Maybe not enough to get him into a court of law, but certainly enough that his allies would move to distance themselves. Without their support, the walls he's carefully built over the years would surely start to crumble. If I can take down enough of those walls, maybe I can get him out of his fortress.

As I start my first set of fifty pushups, I think about the juiciest case I'd like to connect Peter to. He's no longer in office, but Dutch Landry is from one of the two biggest political families in this city. The Landrys and the Morrels have traded the mayor's office back and forth in five of the last six administrations. His son is currently on the city council and has a good shot of running for mayor himself in three years.

But Dutch... Dutch Landry was the type of mayor loved by the press, and hated by the underclass. Virginia and Darcy showed me the evidence firsthand, but hell, I grew up seeing it often enough in Virginia's foster care. I saw the drugs, the street crime that was only checked when the police rolled through in paramilitary fashion. I saw classmates show up with wounds from both police and gang bullets, and I know that a lot of the guns were bought through Dutch Landry's connections. The drugs for sure came in with his authorization. Of course, someone had to arrange transport for all of that, and wouldn't you know, Peter DeLaCoeur knew some friends among the longshoremen who were willing to look the other way as the shipments flooded the Port of New Orleans.

It's how Peter's stayed in business so long. He doesn't directly touch anything. Instead, he makes introductions, facilitates communication between interested parties, and collects his middleman's percentage regardless. He's the ultimate in one-stop criminal shopping. You want it, he knows a guy.

He's completely crooked, but there's no hard evidence. His business dealings are done face to face with cash on the table most of the time, and the IRS thinks he gets his money through renting residential properties in the Lower Ninth Ward. Hell, in their estimation the man's a saint, owning so many Section 8 properties. He's not looking out for anyone but himself, though—he filters his money through those houses.

Say you have a house that you're renting for a thousand dollars a month. Sometimes housing assistance provides full credit for rentals, and sometimes they only provide partial credit. Peter DeLaCoeur only rents to those with partial credit. The government gives him between three hundred and five hundred a month... and the rest of the thousand comes out of his illegal business. He makes friends with the IRS and HUD, who think his fifty houses are all rented out to families in need. Meanwhile, the families think he's renting to them cheap on the down low.

He's just using those same poor families as a cover, since the funds he's filtering are in fact coming from the same drugs and guns that are killing the neighborhoods he owns. He makes even more profit from the Section 8 money. I have to admit, it's a smooth scam, but it's just one of half a dozen that he runs.

If I could just prove it... maybe Andrea can help with that. It'd damage him more than just exposing an embarrassing affair. I don't know. In the meantime, I keep doing my pushups, even though my chest and shoulders are screaming at me at this point.

Someone knocks on my door and I pull my right leg up, bounding to my feet. I approach the door slowly, since it's one of only two entrances to my loft. The other entrance is the old freight elevator that connects to the boxing gym downstairs. Unlike the door, I can control the elevator entrance fully.

Next to the door is one of my home defense weapons. After all the years of martial arts training, you'd think that I'd have something exotic like sai or a wakizashi sword. Maybe a hundred years ago, but what I have instead is a Glock 18. They're highly illegal since they're fully automatic, but since I don't officially exist as far as the law's concerned, I'm not worried about illegally owning this gun. If I need to, I can fire all fifteen rounds through the door in less than a second, and whoever's unlucky enough to be on the other side is going to get turned into Swiss cheese.