Unwritten Laws 01(58)

“Sonny?” Jarrett asked nervously.

“Yeah?”

“Just before you came in, I heard that old nurse of Dr. Cage’s died this morning. Viola something-or-other. Del Richards over at the sheriff’s department told me about it.”

“Yeah?” Sonny looked back toward the highway. “I hadn’t heard that.”

“Hell, I didn’t even know she was in town. Did you?”

“Can’t say I did.”

“Del also said he heard Sheriff Byrd say Dr. Cage killed her. Put her out of her misery, like. Don’t that beat all?”

Sonny clicked his tongue thoughtfully. “Well … Dr. Cage always went his own way. I always liked that about him.”





CHAPTER 12




HENRY SEXTON STOOD in the yard of Wilma Deen’s house, watching a sparrow trying to stuff itself into a martin house mounted on a pole. He’d walked out of Glenn Morehouse’s sickroom with every intention of getting into his SUV and driving away, but once the wind hit his face, he’d felt his rage drain away, leaving behind only a sense of failure. For ten years he’d been working to find a source inside the Double Eagle group. But now that he had one, he’d flung a bunch of righteous bullshit in the man’s face and stormed out. What did I expect? he asked himself. A signed confession with a bow on top? Glenn Morehouse had nothing to look forward to but more suffering followed by death, and Henry had only come here to plunder the dark cave of his conscience. What was more natural than for the old man to gain some pleasure at his expense?

Henry wished he still smoked cigarettes. Fifty yards up the gravel road, a fat black Labrador retriever trudged toward the highway. Beyond the dog, Henry saw movement near the house that stood at the highway turn—Wilma Deen’s nearest neighbor. When he focused, though, he lost the impression. After a few seconds of staring, he felt like a deer trying to spot a careful hunter. With four backward steps he carried himself out of sight of the distant house.

What was I thinking? he wondered. Because of his personal obsession with Albert Norris, he’d barely flipped a page in the Eagles’ catalog of crime. He hadn’t asked about Jimmy Revels and Luther Davis, or even Joe Louis Lewis, the busboy who’d disappeared without a trace. Maybe one or more of those boys was who Morehouse had seen flayed or crucified. Above all, Henry had blown his chance to question Morehouse about Viola Turner’s death. Surely he owed his best efforts to Jimmy Revels and Tom Cage, and to all the families who had never learned the fate of their loved ones? He glanced at the clock on his cell phone. Wilma Deen would return in twenty-five minutes, thirty at the outside. Yet if he walked back into the house now, Morehouse was as likely to curse him as tell him anything further.

Stay or go? he wondered, looking back at his Explorer.

As though in answer, his cell phone rang. The caller ID said G. MOREHOUSE. “Hello?”

“You feel better, asshole?” growled the old man.

“Not really.”

“Did you expect me to spill my guts to you the first time we talked? That how it usually goes in your interviews?”

“Not always.”

The silence stretched for a bit. Then Morehouse said, “You really don’t know what you’re dealing with, Henry. Brody Royal didn’t start out rich. His daddy was a bootlegger in St. Bernard Parish, and a partner with the Little Man before he ever took over New Orleans.”

“The Little Man?” Henry echoed, confused.

“Carlos Marcello, boss of the New Orleans syndicate. Carlos and Brody were in on all kinds of deals together later on. Real estate mostly, but other shit, too. Back in sixty-one, the CIA kidnapped Carlos and flew him down to Central America. They strapped a parachute on him and forced him to jump from the plane at night. That was Bobby Kennedy’s idea of a joke. Didn’t matter. Two weeks later, Carlos was back in New Orleans. Brody paid the Little Man’s hotel bill the whole time he was down there, then helped to fly him back north. That’s the kind of crowd Brody Royal ran with, okay? Meyer Lansky, Santo Trafficante, those guys. In 1960, Carlos and Brody gave Richard Nixon close to a million bucks through Hoffa and the Teamsters, trying to beat John Kennedy. That’s who you’re messing with, Henry. That’s who you want to go after with your little pissant newspaper.”

Henry looked up the long gravel road that led to Highway 84. The black Lab was gone. “All that was a long time ago, Glenn. And Marcello’s dead.”

“Brody ain’t dead. And I’ll tell you something that wasn’t so long ago. You remember when they jailed the state insurance commissioner a couple years back?”