The Second Assassin Page 13
Leaving the garage he continued on down Gravier Street until he found himself back in the riverfront district. He jogged slightly, putting himself onto a much-narrowed Canal Street, then thumped across the jumble of interweaving railway lines and drove down to the ferry slip squeezed in between a pair of giant, rusty-roofed warehouses. It was well past the morning rush and he had no trouble getting a spot on the broad-beamed flatboat. Ten minutes later, with the half-mile breadth of the sluggish mud-coloured river behind it, the ferry pulled in to the Boumy Street pier at Algiers Point.
On the east bank of the Mississippi, New Orleans had grown into a modern, industrialised city but Algiers on the west bank, without a connecting bridge and isolated except for the ferry, had retained its original river-town flavour. There were no skyscrapers or grand cathedrals here. The tallest buildings in Algiers were grain elevators and the churches were small and usually made of wood.
The streets were paved with asphalt now, and there was electricity here as well, but the casual visitor was more likely to see Algiers as a rough-and-ready bayou town than as the Fifteenth Ward and Fifth District of the great city of New Orleans. The best food in Algiers was the pickled egg and pretzel lunches in the bars on Opelousas Avenue, the best entertainment in the semi-public gambling houses run by Sylvestro ‘Sam’ Carolla and his friends and the best women in the single cribs and brothels that hugged the low, mean streets around the Southern Pacific yards.
Following the pencilled instructions on his map, John Bone turned left towards the point itself. Reaching the old Johnson Iron Works and Shipyard he turned right onto Patterson Avenue, following it along the downstream course of the river until he reached the tall chain-link fence surrounding the abandoned Algiers Naval Air Station. The barbed wire on top of the fence was brown with rust and the hangars and buildings were paint-faded, their windows grimy and smashed. Even from the road Bone could see that the runways were cracked and weedy and it didn’t look as though the straw-like stands of grass between the buildings had been cut for years.
Boxing the compass on three sides, Bone skirted the desolate acreage, eventually returning to the unpaved public road that stretched out along the levee above the muddy currents of the broad, snaking river. On the far side, just visible through the heat haze, were the Poland Street docks and the narrow entrance to the ship canal that led up to Lake Pontchartrain.
At the old Quarantine Station Bone followed his directions and turned right down a narrow oiled road bearing a single sign indicating that he was now on the way to the village of Behrman and State Highway 31. Algiers was all but gone now, the townscape replaced by small truck farms and undeveloped grazing land posted with signs advertising a variety of futures for people willing to put down ten per cent on their dream house of tomorrow. By the weathering of the placards and the empty land it didn’t look as though there were too many takers.
At State Highway 31 he turned left again and drove for a mile or so, passing the entrance road leading to the Alvin Callender Airport, New Orleans’s first, its single runway and out-of-date facilities now relegated to use by cargo operators and small charter companies. According to the signs he was now nine miles from New Orleans proper. Bone finally reached the Mississippi once again at Belle Chasse, a down-at-the-heels plantation house and property that stood like a languorous, time-wilted monument to the past. Directly across were the clattering ramps, cranes and rail yards of the Seatrain terminal, a huge, noisy operation that lifted entire freight cars of produce onto waiting ships that would take them downriver to the gulf and eventually to Havana or Edgewater, New Jersey.
At Belle Chasse, Louisiana State 31 hooked hard right following the levee but Bone turned instead onto the one-lane country road that ran north. On the landward side of the road there were smallholding cotton fields and acreage planted in slash pine. On the river side were the long rolling fields of an indigo plantation long since gone to seed and scrub, the perimeters of the fields barely defined by rickety rail fences half turned to rot and lines of low trees planted for windbreaks every hundred yards or so.
The entranceway to the plantation was marked by a pair of rusty iron gates and a stone fence choked with vines. On the far side of the gates two lines of twisted, arthritic oak trees flanked a rutted carriageway leading up to a low hill close to the levee. Perched on the hill, overlooking the river and the fields, was an old plantation house, smaller than Belle Chasse and not as old but in much worse shape. The name of the plantation was still visible, worked into the scrolled wrought-iron design of the gates: LA FLORA.
Bone drove on for another half mile, making sure that the car couldn’t be seen by anyone driving in towards the plantation. He pulled the car up into the shade of half a dozen cypress trees that stood in a cluster by the side of the road, their limbs hung with long grey rags of Spanish moss. He switched off the engine, climbed out of the car and raised the hood, propping it open, then went back for his binoculars and the bag containing the two bottles of soda pop, the bottle opener and the pocket diary he’d purchased from the cigar store in the lobby of the Hotel Roosevelt. Anyone happening along the road would assume that the owner of the car had gone looking for a garage.
Carrying his supplies, Bone headed out across a wedge-shaped field that led to a low, boomerang-shaped ridge, its crest topped with willow and alder. The indigo fields hadn’t been worked for a good thirty or forty years but the snake patterning of the plant rows meant to prevent erosion was still vaguely discernible even though the low-growing legumes had gone to seed decades before. At one end of the ridge there was a small, ramshackle building, and just beyond it, weaving down through the trees, Bone could see the twinkling line of a small stream as it jumped and twisted down the rocks. A spring, obviously, and the building had probably once been a pump house, built to carry cool, fresh water to the house.
Reaching the foot of the ridge, Bone made his way up to the treed crest, keeping well below it as he worked his way across to the source of the stream, a small pool almost directly above the old pump house. The pool was no bigger than a round dining table, fringed with moss and giving the air a fresh, earthy tang. Bone found a narrow stone ledge no more than a foot below the surface and immersed the two bottles of Pepsi in the chilly water. He turned away, crouched down and made his way to the edge of the trees, taking care to keep himself fully in the dappling shadows cast by their leaves and branches.
Below him the ridge dropped down steeply to a sweeping field of tall grass, tips brown and wilted with the heat. Only the hundred feet or so directly around the house had been roughly trimmed down, probably with a handheld scythe, just the way Bone had seen barley mown when he was a small child in Drumdean so long ago.
The two-storeyed house was of good size, at least forty or fifty feet on a side, columns rising all around in the Greek Revival style of the early 1800s. The straight mansard roof was copper gone dull, streaked verdigris and topped with a square cupola set with a pair of windows on each side. Most of the glass in the cupola windows was gone and half the windows of the house itself were smashed as well.
Except for the freshly cut grass, La Flora appeared to be derelict. There were only small clues that spoke of recent attention. Two of the tall windows to the left of the heavy-looking double doors were still intact and gleamed as though they had been freshly washed. On the front and side verandas, leaves and other refuse had been swept into several neat piles, ready to be collected and disposed of. Bone took the binoculars out of their case and took a closer look at La Flora, keeping the lenses out of the sun to prevent reflections.
Using the binoculars he quickly picked up the shadowy marks of tyre tracks in the newly cut grass and followed them to a large outbuilding behind the house. One of the outbuilding doors was slightly open and Bone could see the glint of sunlight on a motor car’s brightwork. He turned his attention back to the house, scanning the windows carefully. A moment later he caught a hint of movement in the cupola. Keeping the binoculars steady he wa
ited and the movement came again, the silhouette of a seated man, regularly bringing his hand up to his mouth – someone smoking a cigarette, posted as a lookout.
Bone put down the binoculars and closed his eyes, listening. A cicada was sounding in the distance, like a high-pitched trill in his ear. There was the faint sound of the little stream behind him. He focused harder, pushing the natural sounds away, trying to pick out anything else, anything out of place. Eventually it came, very faintly, a cough from inside the house, repeated twice, and then the sound of hard shoes on wooden floors.
He opened his eyes again, used his index finger to wipe away a few beads of stinging sweat and looked down at the bed of brown and green pine needles in front of him. Lit brilliantly in a patch of hot sun a few feet away was the carcass of a bird, a jay from the colour of its feathers, its breast a cage of gristle and bones that fluttered with the nervous movement of dozens of iridescent bluebottle flies, their maggot castings piled like tiny tubes of parchment beneath the fragile ribs. The flesh of the head was desiccated down to skull and yellow beak, the eyes withered, sucked dry of life by the sun. A line of ants marched up from the splayed, curled feet and disappeared into the cave of the dead bird’s corpse.
Bone smiled, enjoying the simple elegance of the small, unmarked tragedy and transformation, then edged back deeper into the shadows before climbing to his feet. He went back to the pool, took out one of the Pepsi-Colas and opened it with the crawfish device. He drank the Pepsi slowly, enjoying the cold sweet bite of the soda, thinking about what he had seen. He put the bottle down, took out the little diary and used the pencil it came with to quickly sketch the layout of La Flora. The upper rooms could be discounted with the exception of the cupola since tomorrow’s meeting would almost certainly take place on the ground floor.
If it was like other homes of its kind Bone had seen before, the interior would be divided into three main rooms, a dining room to the right, a larger living room to the left and a kitchen in the back. Between dining room and living room there would be a wide front hall and a staircase leading upward. Entrance at the front, exit through the kitchen and the only clear approach to the house being the lane through the aisle of oak trees stretching back from the main gate. Behind the house were the outbuildings and some upwardly sloping marshland leading to the levee and the river beyond. La Flora was like a funneling crayfish trap – once in, escape would be virtually impossible.
Bone finished the first of the two sodas then went back to his shadowed vantage point. Over the course of the next three quarters of an hour he spotted five men. One was black and carried a broom and pail. The other four wore dark suits and heavy shoes. Three of them were of average height with dark curly hair and Mediterranean features that were alike enough to suggest they were brothers or possibly close cousins. Sicilian, perhaps, Italian certainly, which meant that they were probably members of Sam Carolla’s New Orleans-based criminal organisation.
The fourth man had appeared carrying a hunting rifle and Bone assumed he had been the lookout in the cupola. He was taller than the other three, broad-chested and blond with pale, sunburned skin. He handed over the weapon to one of the Italians and lit a cigarette. Changing shifts, perhaps, arguing over whose turn it was to climb up onto the roof. It was just past noon now and the interior of the box-like cupola would be swelteringly hot.
Bone stayed in position and waited. Another hour passed with nothing of note occurring beyond the occasional sound of an aeroplane landing at the nearby airfield and, once, the distant shriek of a train whistle. Then, just after one o’clock, two cars, both Packards, both black and dusty, came down the lane between the oaks and parked in front of the house. Four more dark-suited men appeared out of the first car, their clothing and looks apparently cut from the same cloth as the other three Bone had already seen.
Three men climbed out of the second car and went up onto the front veranda of the house. These three, older, better dressed in lighter-coloured suits, ignored the younger men around them. One of them, in his late fifties or maybe even older, with the blowsy open face of a heavy drinker and thinning dark hair, was recognisable to Bone almost at once. He’d seen him from time to time in the casino of the Hotel Nacional in Havana and occasionally in the newspapers. This was Sam Carolla, boss of the New Orleans Mob, and by the looks of it he was taking the other two men on a tour of La Flora.
The heavier and shorter of the two men Carolla was guiding was clearly uncomfortable in the heat and mopped his forehead every few seconds with a large white handkerchief. The other man didn’t seem to be bothered at all. He was much taller than his companion, very tall, with large ears, a long nose and exceptionally fair skin that he protected with a white Stetson. After a few moments on the veranda Carolla and his guests disappeared inside the house.
Bone had seen enough. He eased back for a second time, then went to the pool and retrieved the full bottle of soda pop from its hiding place and put it and the already empty bottle and the crimped metal cap back into the paper bag. He slid the binoculars back into their case and walked back to the car, careful to keep the ridge at his back, blocking any potential view from the lookout in the cupola.
Returning to the motor car Bone lowered the hood, climbed in behind the wheel and opened the second bottle of Pepsi, holding it between his knees as he drove back down the country road, sipping the cold beverage as he put his thoughts in order. The reason for using La Flora was logical and clear. The property was away from prying eyes, relatively easy to secure and close to the old airport so that anyone flying in for the meeting could do so with anonymity but the very need for that anonymity was distressing since it meant that the men attending the meeting were well enough known to require such a high level of discretion.
Carolla’s presence was equally worrisome. Contrary to the lurid stories the yellow press reported, there was no code of silence within the Mob, in New Orleans or anywhere else. Given the right circumstances and incentives any one of them could be made to tell all that they knew. Conspiracies were dangerous, political ones even more so, and by all appearances this one was spreading out of control. As Bone drove back towards Algiers and the city he noticed a heavy line of deep grey clouds massing like a huge, dark curtain in the south. Before long it was going to rain and rain hard.
Bone was back in New Orleans just after three o’clock. He parked the car in the lot next to the hotel, returned to his room briefly to drop off the binoculars and the brown paper bag, then walked the few short blocks down to the main branch of the public library on Lee Circle. The large building, designed in what Bone liked to call the Roman Temple tradition, had a more than adequate supply of newspapers and periodicals in the main reading room as well as a superior clipping file. Within an hour, diary and pencil in hand, Bone had names for most of the people he had seen that afternoon.
He had been right in his immediate identification of Sam Carolla and the three similar-looking young men of Italian origin were Carlos, Peter and Michael Marcello, all of them associated with various enterprises of Carolla’s. The tall blond man with the rifle was one James Moran, also an employee of Carolla and previously a bodyguard of the assassinated former governor of Louisiana, the infamous Huey Long, the ‘Kingfish.’
Far more important were the two men Sam Carolla had been taking on a tour of the old plantation house. The heavyset man continuously mopping his face was Huey Long’s deputy, a one-time Bible-thumping minister from Wisconsin named Gerald L. Smith. A look at his recent clippings file was revealing – it was almost empty. Since Long’s murder, Gerald Smith’s standing had fallen to an all-time low. Within days of the murder of his one-time boss in September 1935, the various factions within the Kingfish machine had begun squabbling over who would succeed their fallen leader in the Senate, who would be the next governor and, most important, who would control Long’s immense financial war chest.
Smith had been pushed out of the running almost immediately by Louisiana insiders, including Huey Long’s
brother. The best the preacher had been able to do since then was insert himself into the madcap but popular Old Age Revolving Pension movement being vigorously promoted in California by a white-haired doctor from the Black Hills of South Dakota named Francis Everett Townsend. Apparently Smith had now also inserted himself into the meeting at La Flora scheduled for the following day.
The second man with Carolla was also interesting but for different reasons. A thirty-one-year-old, recently elected Texas Democratic congressman from the oil-powerful Tenth District who had strong ties to the man who had helped put him there – John Nance Garner, thirty years a Texas congressman and senator and now the vice president of the United States. The young Texan’s name was Lyndon Baines Johnson and according to his file of clippings he knew how to pull all the right patronage levers in Washington. What a collection – the local Mob, a washed-up back-room boy and a give-a-favour get-a-favour congressman with less than a single term under his belt. Bone returned the clipping envelopes to the periodicals desk and left the library.
He walked back to the hotel, noting that the clouds he’d seen coming up from the south on his return from La Flora were now massing overhead. As he reached the Roosevelt and ducked under the awning over the main entrance on Baronne Street it began to pour. Bone went up to his room and lay down on the bed, watching the heavy rain smear the glass of the window, tapping on the panes with small, skeletal clicking sounds, ghostly, ancient come-hithers he tried to ignore.
On the wall at the end of the bed was a cheaply framed and poorly rendered watercolour of a yacht race on Lake Pontchartrain, the sky an unbelievable blue, two boats running with the wind but in opposite directions on dead-calm water unruffled by any breeze at all. The work of an amateur.
Amateur, of course, was the operative word. In his experience it was the very amateurishness of the people who wanted his services that made the purchase of those particular services necessary. By nature those of his profession were a breed apart. Virtually all men who killed for a cause wound up dying for it as well. He’d seen enough of that from his brethren in Ireland and more again on his travels.