Page 102 of The Fourth Option
Walker reached in and grabbed a handful of plastic baggies from the Snowball box and stuffed them into his jacket pocket.
“Now we go,” he said, grabbing Belle by the arm and hurrying through the Mardi Gras beads into the living room, out the front door, past dead Cooler man to the BMW.
“Get in,” he ordered, running to the driver’s side and jumping behind the wheel. “Give me the keys.”
The sirens had to be just blocks away.
Walker stepped on the clutch and turned the key. The engine sputtered.
“Oh, come on,” he said.
“Pump the clutch twice, and then slowly give her gas,” Belle advised.
Walker followed orders and the car rumbled to life.
He sped from the curb and kept the lights off until they were two blocks away, at which point he slowed to the speed limit and turned on the pale, yellow beams.
“You ever meet anyone you didn’t kill?” Belle asked.
Walker ignored her, making sure to obey all traffic laws as he made his way back to the river.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
THE RAIN CAMEdown in sheets, hammering the slate rooftops and turning the cobblestones of Jackson Square into a slick, glistening mirror. It was the kind of rain that made tourists duck into galleries and locals pull their hats low. But Jarrett Stanton didn’t mind. He liked the rain in New Orleans. It washed the city clean, or at least it tried to.
He sat alone at a corner table in Genevieve’s, a small café tucked just off the square. The windows were open despite the storm, and the scent of chicory coffee mingled with the ozone tang of wet pavement. If his table had been six inches nearer to the sill, the rain might have splashed into his cup. Genevieve’s was a few blocks from the French Market, where he and Alma took the kids for ice cream treats on Saturdays.
Across the square, a jazz quintet played under a sagging awning, their brass instruments gleaming. The drummer tapped out a quick rhythm, unfazed by the weather. The band played on, dancing, moving, performing with gusto.
He checked his watch. 12:04 p.m. Two thousand steps. Long way to go.
A man in a colorful shirt hurried over the bricks, anxious to get out of the downpour.
“Alvaro,” Stanton said, rising as the DEA agent shook water from his shoulders like a golden retriever coming out of a pond.
“Looking dapper as always, Jarrett,” Alvaro Mendez said, running his fingers along his two-day-old stubble. His Hawaiian shirt was half-buttoned and speckled with water marks. The chains that held the badge around his neck somewhere below the shirt were tangled in his chest hair. He wore grungy Chuck Taylors and faded jeans.
Special Agent Alvaro Mendez reached into his back pocket and withdrew a brass case. At first, Stanton thought it was a flask. Mendez snapped it open. Cigars. He offered Stanton a stogie.
Stanton waved it off.
“Really?” Mendez said, surprised. “It’s a Cuban.”
“Perk of the job?”
“Straight from Havana.”
Mendez struck a match against a book from a bar in Juárez. The logo, a jaguar lounging in a tree. Puma Club.
It took the DEA agent three matches to get the cigar lit. The breeze off the square kept breaking the flame.
As in the rest of the country, smoking was prohibited inside restaurants, but the Big Easy was just that, lax on rules. The waitress said nothing as she took their orders—Mendez, a double cheeseburger; Stanton, a garden salad.
“I appreciate you meeting in the Quarter,” Mendez said, puffing smoke toward the slowly turning ceiling fans. “I got in late.”
“Mexico?”
A shrug.
